Intergen adopts an approach in preventive medicine that aims to protect and improve the health status of the person by supporting genetic methods with special design processes.
PREVENTIVE MEDICINE
The International Human Genome Project started in 1990 and was completed in 2003, thus achieving the goal of mapping the genes in human DNA. While it was much more difficult to work with technology in the period when the project was started and carried out, technology has developed further in the intervening years, and the work of electronics and artificial intelligence with the medical community has started to increase. Genetic studies have become easier and more affordable.
With what medicine offers us today, it is known that humans have about 20,500 genes and about 100,000 proteins. Currently, approximately 6-8 thousand of these genes are known to be associated with diseases. To understand what other genes and non-gene regions in DNA do, studies continue, publications from all over the world, including Turkey, are constantly followed, and new genes identified are also included in the research.
This rapid progress of genetics allows us to predict that the treatment of many diseases, including cancer, will be done by genetic methods in the future. Already, when a genetic disease is suspected, the relevant gene is studied in the patient, and personalized medical treatment is planned after the diagnosis is made by molecular methods. In fact, by evaluating who else in the family is at risk, recommendations for the prevention of intergenerational transmission and recurrence of the disease can be shared with the patient.
What is being talked about all over the world today is what genetics can provide us in terms of "preventive/protective treatments". It is now possible to know a disease before it occurs and to present our genetic predispositions to the knowledge of physicians while racing against time in emergencies. By having the spouses do a genetic test before marriage, possible risky situations for the baby and the mother can be detected during pregnancy, and ways to protect against this can be developed before the risk occurs. SMA disease, which has become more well-known in society due to the struggle of families in recent years and can occur in the baby as a result of the genetic predisposition of the spouses, and the premarital tests developed for the diagnosis of this disease are an example of the contribution of genetics in terms of preventive treatments. There are thousands of other rare genetic diseases such as SMA, whose carrier rates vary from society to society, but which can be seen frequently in countries where consanguineous marriages are common, such as Turkey. The opportunity that genetics provides us in the early diagnosis of these diseases is groundbreaking in the protection and improvement of human life.
For sure, with our current medical knowledge, it is not possible to detect all possible diseases as a result of genetic tests or to treat them afterward. As Intergen, the service we will offer you is to perform tests with gene panels created as a result of a large literature study, including NHS (National Health Service) and ACMG (American College of Medical Genetics) data, and to report pathogenic or highly pathogenic changes that can be detected in these panels. Thus, we aim to inform you, within the possibilities of medical science, about your medical conditions that you may have a predisposition to, that may appear in the future, or that may be passed on to your descendants.
Now is the time to take precautions without getting sick
What can be done?
• The risk of having sick children can be reduced with pregnancy and premarital screening.
• “Familial cancer risks” that start early, spread quickly, and increase the risk in the family can be determined and precautions can be taken.
• With the “expanded newborn screenings” discussed by the whole world, measures can be taken for some diseases that may occur both in the neonatal period and in the following years.
• In 65% of newborns and 30% of adults in intensive care, genetic diseases are the factor in the process. These can be diagnosed.
• Conditions that are frequently underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed or that cause problems during treatment can be detected in advance in patients who apply to the emergency department.
• The risk of recurrence of diseases seen in the family can be reduced in the family, and measures can be taken before disease symptoms appear.
All of these should be done before and after genetic counseling and clinical information processes.
PREVENTING DISEASES WITH THE CORRECT COUNSELING REDUCES PSYCHOLOGICAL PRESSURE AND REDUCES GOVERNMENT AND PERSONAL COSTS.
NOWADAYS GENETIC TECHNIQUES ARE THE FIRST PRIORITY OF THE WORLD.
Intergen preventive medicine policy text
The main purpose of medicine is trying to prevent people from getting sick by doing preventive medicine rather than treating them after they are sick. The financial and moral costs of genetic diseases are very high. It is a tiring and worrying long process for families. In rare diseases, the patient has difficulties getting some medical support. The cost of these diseases to the country is also quite high. For all these reasons, it is the best approach to take the necessary precautions before contracting genetic diseases.
Our center strives to carry out preventive medicine services accepted by science. No study without scientific support is put into practice. One of the most important tasks of genetic counseling is to prevent these risks before the disease occurs. For this, it is not necessary to have a family history. The major challenge of risk assessment studies in genetics is the lack of scientific data that allows us to interpret the exact meaning of some genetic changes. For this reason, it is essential not to report all the obtained data, but to report the data with scientific support and, if necessary, to present the updated data to the patient by examining the data again and again over time. It may be necessary to conduct some new tests for these re-evaluations over time due to changes in technology or various technical-scientific reasons. Large family screenings may be necessary to understand the meaning of some genetic changes. In such cases, sometimes the inability to cooperate with certain people in the family may cause some difficulties in the interpretation of the data. The genetic changes tested may not cause clinical findings in some people or may cause different clinical pictures than expected. For all these reasons, it is not possible to reach 100% protection in preventive medicine services, at least today. In summary, the aim here is to try to reduce the risk as much as possible.