Traditional Chinese medicine and new concepts of predictive, preventive and personalized medicine in diagnosis and treatment of suboptimal health

Abstract

BackgroundThe premise of disease-related phenotypes is the definition of the counterpart normality in medical sciences. Contrary to clinical practices that can be carefully planned according to clinical needs, heterogeneity and uncontrollability is the essence of humans in carrying out health studies. Full characterization of consistent phenotypes that define the general population is the basis to individual difference normalization in personalized medicine. Self-claimed normal status may not represent health because asymptomatic subjects may carry chronic diseases at their early stage, such as cancer, diabetes mellitus and atherosclerosis. Currently, treatments for non-communicable chronic diseases (NCD) are implemented after disease onset, which is a very much delayed approach from the perspective of predictive, preventive and personalized medicine (PPPM). A NCD pandemic will develop and be accompanied by increased global economic burden for healthcare systems throughout both developed and developing countries. This paper examples the characterization of the suboptimal health status (SHS) which represents a new PPPM challenge in a population with ambiguous health complaints such as general weakness, unexplained medical syndrome (UMS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), post-viral fatigue syndrome (PVFS) and chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (CFIDS).MethodsWe applied clinical informatic approaches and developed a questionnaire—suboptimal health status questionnaire-25 (SHSQ-25) for measuring SHS. The validity and reliability of this approach were evaluated in a small pilot study and then in a cross-sectional study of 3,405 participants in China.ResultsWe found a correlation between SHS and systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, plasma glucose, total cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol among men, and a correlation between SHS and systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, triglycerides and HDL cholesterol among women.ConclusionsThe SHSQ-25 is a self-rated questionnaire of perceived health complaints, which can be used as a new instrument for PPPM. An ongoing longitudinal SHS cohort survey (China Sub-optimal Health Cohort Study, COACS) consisting of 50,000 participants will provide a powerful health trial to use SHSQ-25 for its application to PPPM through patient stratification and therapy monitoring using innovative technologies of predictive diagnostics and prognosis: an effort of paradigm shift from reactive to predictive medicine.

Associations between breakfast eating habits and health-promoting lifestyle, suboptimal health status in Southern China: a population based, cross sectional study

“…But this definition is still a controversy for in the research of intension about health, there are problems as obscurities in definition [36]. [27,28,37]. Results in this study indicate a high prevalence of SHS among the sample population (46%), which is similar to previous reports [24,38].…”

“…A previous investigation by the current authors found that suboptimal health status was applicable to 65.1% of the surveyed population in Southern China [24], with SHS now a major global public health challenge [20,25,26]. Current prevention and intervention strategies recommend disease prevention and effective treatment of early-stage illness [27,28]. However, both the etiology and mechanisms associated with SHS require further elucidation.…”

Hypertension prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control in northeast China: a population-based cross-sectional survey

“…In this aspect, Shao et al [27] did a first attempt to map the medical care ecology of Beijing urban population, which would be useful for highlighting health care system reform, the formulation of better health care policy and improving medical education to meet the expanding demands of the people. Beyond that, Wang et al [28] had developed a questionnaire-suboptimal health status questionnaire-25 (SHSQ-25), which could be used as an effective instrument for predictive, preventive and personalized medicine, and would enable clinicians and public health workers to predict an individual's predisposition, such as prehypertension in order to provide targeted preventive measures before the actual onset of the disease. However, the awareness and control rates in northeast Our present findings also showed that subjects who were overweight/obesity or those with dyslipidemia or diabetes tended to be more aware of their hypertension than those without these conditions.…”

Unique features of Ayurveda dietetics

“…Recently, the concept of suboptimal health status (SHS) was advocated from the perspective of predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine [23,24]. SHS is characterized by ambiguous health complaints and recognized as a subclinical, reversible stage of chronic disease.…”