Personalised medicine for psychosis

BACKGROUND: Personalised medicine (pm) means treatment that specifically targets the needs of individual patients on the basis of genetic, biomarker, phenotypic or psychosocial characteristics.<br/> AIM: To update our knowledge about the current use of pm in the treatment of psychotic disorders.<br/> METHOD: Review of the literature on pm for psychoses.<br/> RESULTS: At the moment, genetic and other biological characteristics cannot be used for the diagnosis and treatment of psychotic disorders because they are not sensitive enough and their specificity is too low. We investigated immunulogical, oxidative, metabolic, hormonal and dopaminergic aspects that could lead to the use of pm. pm is already being used on the basis of phenotypical, cognitive and psychosocial characteristics; those characteristics include substance abuse, cognitive dysfunction, ethnicity and childhood trauma.<br/> CONCLUSION: In the next years there may be more opportunities for using for pm in psychosis. The increase may results from large genetic network studies and treatment studies involving stratification based on hypothetical specific mechanisms instead of on the categorical diagnosis of illnesses such as schizophrenia.