Translational research: precision medicine, personalized medicine, targeted therapies: marketing or science?

Personalized medicine is based on: 1) improved clinical or non-clinical methods (including biomarkers) for a more discriminating and precise diagnosis of diseases; 2) targeted therapies of the choice or the best drug for each patient among those available; 3) dose adjustment methods to optimize the benefit-risk ratio of the drugs chosen; 4) biomarkers of efficacy, toxicity, treatment discontinuation, relapse, etc. Unfortunately, it is still too often a theoretical concept because of the lack of convenient diagnostic methods or treatments, particularly of drugs corresponding to each subtype of pathology, hence to each patient. Stratified medicine is a component of personalized medicine employing biomarkers and companion diagnostics to target the patients likely to present the best benefit-risk balance for a given active compound.

Non-invasive prenatal testing for fetal sex determination: is ultrasound still relevant?

Early prenatal diagnosis of fetal sex is necessary to optimize pregnancy management in families known to be at risk of some heritable disorders. The demonstration of cell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) in the mother's blood has made it possible to identify Y chromosome sequences in maternal blood and to determine fetal sex noninvasively, during the first trimester. This procedure can significantly reduce the number of invasive procedures for women with fetuses at risk of sex-linked diseases and optimize the management of these pregnancies.

Tubal anastomosis after tubal sterilization: a review.

Purpose: To evaluate various techniques for restoring tubal patency after sterilisation.

Methods: A search strategy was designed, and for each subject either thesaurus terms (MeSH descriptors) or terms from the title or summary were used.

Results: Mean length of hospital stay following laparoscopy seems to be shorter in comparison with laparotomy (3.

Vaginal myomectomy: literature review.

The objective of this literature review was to evaluate the results obtained at vaginal myomectomy. The databases consulted were Medline, Cochrane Library, National Guideline Clearinghouse, and Health Technology Assessment Database. Keywords used for research were colpotomy, myomectomy, and vaginal myomectomy, and then abdominal myomectomy, laparoscopic-assisted vaginal myomectomy, and laparoscopic myomectomy.