Systematic Molecular Phenotyping: A Path Toward Precision Emergency Medicine?

2023 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference on Precision Emergency Medicine: Development of a policy-relevant, patient-centered research agenda

OBJECTIVES

Precision medicine is data-driven health care tailored to individual patients based on their unique attributes, including biologic profiles, disease expressions, local environments, and socioeconomic conditions. Emergency medicine (EM) has been peripheral to the precision medicine discourse, lacking both a unified definition of precision medicine and a clear research agenda. We convened a national consensus conference to build a shared mental model and develop a research agenda for precision EM.

METHODS

We held a conference to (1) define precision EM, (2) develop an evidence-based research agenda, and (3) identify educational gaps for current and future EM clinicians. Nine preconference workgroups (biomedical ethics, data science, health professions education, health care delivery and access, informatics, omics, population health, sex and gender, and technology and digital tools), comprising 84 individuals, garnered expert opinion, reviewed relevant literature, engaged with patients, and developed key research questions. During the conference, each workgroup shared how they defined precision EM within their domain, presented relevant conceptual frameworks, and engaged a broad set of stakeholders to refine precision EM research questions using a multistage consensus-building process.

RESULTS

A total of 217 individuals participated in this initiative, of whom 115 were conference-day attendees. Consensus-building activities yielded a definition of precision EM and key research questions that comprised a new 10-year precision EM research agenda. The consensus process revealed three themes: (1) preeminence of data, (2) interconnectedness of research questions across domains, and (3) promises and pitfalls of advances in health technology and data science/artificial intelligence. The Health Professions Education Workgroup identified educational gaps in precision EM and discussed a training roadmap for the specialty.

CONCLUSIONS

A research agenda for precision EM, developed with extensive stakeholder input, recognizes the potential and challenges of precision EM. Comprehensive clinician training in this field is essential to advance EM in this domain.

Characteristics of Emergency Medicine Specimen Bank Participants Compared to the Overall Emergency Department Population

INTRODUCTION

Biorepositories lack diversity both demographically and with regard to the clinical complaints of patients enrolled. The Emergency Medicine Specimen Bank (EMSB) seeks to enroll a diverse cohort of patients for discovery research in acute care conditions. Our objective in this study was to determine the differences in demographics and clinical complaints between participants in the EMSB and the overall emergency department (ED) population.

METHODS

This was a retrospective analysis of participants of the EMSB and the entire UCHealth at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center (UCHealth AMC) ED population across three periods: peri-EMSB; post-EMSB; and COVID-19. We compared patients consented to the EMSB to the entire ED population to determine differences in age, gender, ethnicity, race, clinical complaints, and severity of illness. We used chi-square tests to compare categorical variables and the Elixhauser Comorbidity Index to determine differences in the severity of illness between the groups.

RESULTS

Between February 5, 2018-January 29, 2022, there were 141,670 consented encounters in the EMSB, representing 40,740 unique patients and over 13,000 blood samples collected. In that same time, the ED saw approximately 188,402 unique patients for 387,590 encounters. The EMSB had significantly higher rates of participation from the following: patients 18-59 years old (80.3% vs 77.7%); White patients (52.3% vs 47.8%), and women (54.8% vs 51.1%) compared to the overall ED population. The EMSB had lower rates of participation from patients ≥70 years, Hispanic patients, Asian patients, and men. The EMSB population had higher mean comorbidity scores. During the six months after Colorado's first COVID-19 case, the rate of consented patients and samples collected increased. The odds of consent during the COVID-19 study period were 1.32 (95% CI 1.26-1.39), and the odds of sample capture were 2.19 (95% CI 2.0-2.41).

CONCLUSION

The EMSB is representative of the overall ED population for most demographics and clinical complaints.

United States Emergency Department Use of Medications with Pharmacogenetic Recommendations

Introduction

Emergency departments (ED) use many medications with a range of therapeutic efficacy and potential significant side effects, and many medications have dosage adjustment recommendations based on the patient’s specific genotype. How frequently medications with such pharmaco-genetic recommendations are used in United States (US) EDs has not been studied.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the 2010–2015 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). We reported the proportion of ED visits in which at least one medication with Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC) recommendation of Level A or B evidence was ordered. Secondary comparisons included distributions and 95% confidence intervals of age, gender, race/ethnicity, ED disposition, geographical region, immediacy, and insurance status between all ED visits and those involving a CPIC medication.

Results

From 165,155 entries representing 805,726,000 US ED visits in the 2010–2015 NHAMCS, 148,243,000 ED visits (18.4%) led to orders of CPIC medications. The most common CPIC medication was tramadol (6.3%). Visits involving CPIC medications had higher proportions of patients who were female, had private insurance and self-pay, and were discharged from the ED. They also involved lower proportions of patients with Medicare and Medicaid.

Conclusion

Almost one fifth of US ED visits involve a medication with a pharmacogenetic recommendation that may impact the efficacy and toxicity for individual patients. While direct application of genotyping is still in development, it is important for emergency care providers to understand and support this technology given its potential to improve individualized, patient-centered care.

Machine Learning and Precision Medicine in Emergency Medicine: The Basics

As machine learning (ML) and precision medicine become more readily available and used in practice, emergency physicians must understand the potential advantages and limitations of the technology. This narrative review focuses on the key components of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and precision medicine in emergency medicine (EM). Based on the content expertise, we identified articles from EM literature. The authors provided a narrative summary of each piece of literature. Next, the authors provided an introduction of the concepts of ML, artificial intelligence as an extension of ML, and precision medicine. This was followed by concrete examples of their applications in practice and research. Subsequently, we shared our thoughts on how to consume the existing research in these subjects and conduct high-quality research for academic emergency medicine. We foresee that the EM community will continue to adapt machine learning, artificial intelligence, and precision medicine in research and practice. We described several key components using our expertise.

Precision medicine: Uses and challenges

Precision medicine has brought in many changes to the practise of medicine. The omics-based development of biomarkers and pharmaco-omics-based drug development programmes are evidences for the advancement. However, the field where it has proved to be most useful is in the development of various modalities of treatment in oncology. Various drugs targeting vascular endothelial growth factor, epidermal growth factor, tyrosine kinase receptor and rat sarcoma mutations have come to the forefront proving to be beneficial in many cancers. Some of the classic drugs developed using this concept include trastuzumab, bevacizumab, cetuximab and panitumumab among others. Precision medicine has been put to best use in the COVID-19 pandemic through use of various biomarkers such as IL-6 and c-reactive protein in assessing severity of disease, for development of various therapies and also to judge efficacy of vaccines. Precision medicine is also finding its place in management of infectious diseases, chronic diseases such as asthma, connective tissue diseases, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity. India has also made its presence felt in the field by launching various initiatives such as the Indian genome project and Indian cancer genome atlas. Numerous challenges still exist to the future of precision medicine such as cost involved, ethics, security of the Big data, merger of various platforms to integrate data and also availability of trained manpower to manage the data and algorithms. This new age medicine is a big step forward for mankind and hopefully it will bring more benefits for both patients and the caregivers in the near future.

Mouse Quantitative Proteomics Knowledgebase: reference protein concentration ranges in 20 mouse tissues using 5000 quantitative proteomics assays

Laboratory mouse is the most used animal model in biological research, largely due to its high conserved synteny with human. Researchers use mice to answer various questions ranging from determining a pathological effect of knocked out/in gene to understanding drug metabolism. Our group developed >5000 quantitative targeted proteomics assays for 20 mouse tissues and determined the concentration ranges of a total of more than 1600 proteins using heavy labelled internal standards. We describe here MouseQuaPro; a knowledgebase that hosts this collection of carefully curated experimental data. The Web-based application includes protein concentrations from >700 mouse tissue samples from three common research strains, corresponding to more than 200k experimentally determined concentrations. The knowledgebase integrates the assay and protein concentration information with their human orthologs, functional and molecular annotations, biological pathways, related human diseases, and known gene expressions. At its core are the protein concentration ranges, which provide insights into (dis)similarities between tissues, strains, and sexes. MouseQuaPro implements advanced search as well as filtering functionalities with a simple interface and interactive visualization. This information-rich resource provides an initial map of protein absolute concentration in mouse tissues and allows guided design of proteomics phenotyping experiments. The knowledgebase is available at mousequapro.proteincentre.com. (Reviewer access username and password: mousequapro_reviewer1234567).

Can miRNAs Be Considered as Diagnostic and Therapeutic Molecules in Ischemic Stroke Pathogenesis?-Current Status

Ischemic stroke is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Clinical manifestations of stroke are long-lasting and causing economic burden on the patients and society. Current therapeutic modalities to treat ischemic stroke (IS) are unsatisfactory due to the intricate pathophysiology and poor functional recovery of brain cellular compartment. MicroRNAs (miRNA) are endogenously expressed small non-coding RNA molecules, which can act as translation inhibitors and play a pivotal role in the pathophysiology associated with IS. Moreover, miRNAs may be used as potential diagnostic and therapeutic tools in clinical practice; yet, the complete role of miRNAs is enigmatic during IS. In this review, we explored the role of miRNAs in the regulation of stroke risk factors viz., arterial hypertension, metabolic disorders, and atherosclerosis. Furthermore, the role of miRNAs were reviewed during IS pathogenesis accompanied by excitotoxicity, oxidative stress, inflammation, apoptosis, angiogenesis, neurogenesis, and Alzheimer's disease. The functional role of miRNAs is a double-edged sword effect in cerebral ischemia as they could modulate pathological mechanisms associated with risk factors of IS. miRNAs pertaining to IS pathogenesis could be potential biomarkers for stroke; they could help researchers to identify a particular stroke type and enable medical professionals to evaluate the severity of brain injury. Thus, ascertaining the role of miRNAs may be useful in deciphering their diagnostic role consequently it is plausible to envisage a suitable therapeutic modality against IS.

Metabolomic profiling of metoprolol hypertension treatment reveals altered gut microbiota-derived urinary metabolites

Introduction

Metoprolol succinate is a long-acting beta-blocker prescribed for the management of hypertension (HTN) and other cardiovascular diseases. Metabolomics, the study of end-stage metabolites of upstream biologic processes, yield insight into mechanisms of drug effectiveness and safety. Our aim was to determine metabolomic profiles associated with metoprolol effectiveness for the treatment of hypertension.

Methods

We performed a prospective pragmatic trial (NCT02293096) that enrolled patients between 30 and 80 years with uncontrolled HTN. Patients were started on metoprolol succinate at a dose based upon systolic blood pressure (SBP). Urine and blood pressure measurements were collected weekly. Individuals with a 10% decline in SBP or heart rate (HR) were considered responsive. Genotype for the CYP2D6 enzyme, the primary metabolic pathway for metoprolol, was evaluated for each subject. Unbiased metabolomic analyses were performed on urine samples using UPLC-QTOF mass spectrometry.

Results

Urinary metoprolol metabolite ratios are indicative of patient CYP2D6 genotypes. Patients taking metoprolol had significantly higher urinary levels of many gut microbiota-dependent metabolites including hydroxyhippuric acid, hippuric acid, and methyluric acid. Urinary metoprolol metabolite profiles of normal metabolizer (NM) patients more closely correlate to ultra-rapid metabolizer (UM) patients than NM patients. Metabolites did not predict either 10% SBP or HR decline.

Conclusion

In summary, urinary metabolites predict CYP2D6 genotype in hypertensive patients taking metoprolol. Metoprolol succinate therapy affects the microbiome-derived metabolites.

The Current Status of Genes and Genetic Testing in Emergency Medicine: A Narrative Review

Context:

An emergency is any medical problem that could cause death or permanent injury if not treated quickly. In some occasions, the kind of urgent intervention depends on patient’s exact genetic background. Unfortunately, the importance of genes in medical emergencies has been forgotten in recent decades.

Evidence acquisition:

In order to find relevant articles, we searched two databases of Pubmed and Embase. The exact words of “genes”, “genetics”, “epigenetics”, “DNA”, and “emergency” were used alone and in combination. All studies like randomized clinical trials (RCT), case/controls, case series, case reports, and review articles were studied to find the related data. No time limitation was considered for the studies.

Results:

Several aspects of genetic testing are newly considered in emergency departments including cell-free DNA (cfDNA) for disease diagnosis, pharmacogenetics for decreasing the adverse drug effects, and personalized medicine for exact emergency interventions in diseases like Vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (vEDS). Data from genetic testing and genome wide association studies have yielded promising results to make medical emergency interventions more beneficial in the near future.

Conclusion:

Taking everything into consideration, several advanced genetic and epigenetic alteration technologies can change emergency medicine for the better. Personalized genetic data of patients can turn emergency medicine to personalized medicine.

Unveiling the guidance heterogeneity for genome-informed drug treatment interventions among regulatory bodies and research consortia

Pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine interventions hold promise to optimize drug treatment modalities and hence, improve the quality of life of the patients by minimizing the occurrence of adverse drug reactions and/or maximizing drug treatment efficacy. To this end, proper guidance for accurately prescribing the correct drug at the right dose is empowered by major regulatory bodies, namely the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicine Agency (EMA), and well-recognized research consortia, like the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC), that propose therapeutic recommendations after the thorough evaluation of the existing scientific evidence base. In this context, the consistency of these recommendations is crucial for smoothly integrating pharmacogenomics into the clinic. Here, we collected all of the important and clinically actionable pharmacogenomics information provided by the aforementioned renowned sources and documented it in order to assess potential similarities and, most importantly, differences. Our data show that the level of concordance regarding the guidance provided for the same drug-gene association pairs varies significantly, despite the fact that it all derives from a single evidence base. In particular, apart from the expected similarities in a number of association pairs, especially the ones related to cancer genomics, there are still major discrepancies that create confusion as to which guidance should be followed in order to properly inform drug prescribing. This regulatory deficiency calls for the fruitful engagement of the regulatory agencies involved with the contribution of other experts engaged in the field of pharmacogenomics in an effort to harmonize the existing arsenal of guidance for genome-informed drug prescription. The achievement of harmonization would in turn expedite bringing personalized medicine closer to clinical fruition.

The Emergency Medicine Specimen Bank: An Innovative Approach To Biobanking In Acute Care

The Emergency Medicine Specimen Bank (EMSB) was developed to facilitate precision medicine in acute care. The EMSB is a biorepository of clinical health data and biospecimens collected from all adult English- or Spanish-speaking individuals who are able and willing to provide consent and are treated at the UCHealth-University of Colorado Hospital Emergency Department. The EMSB is the first acute care biobank that seeks to enroll all patients, with all conditions who present to the ED. Acute care biobanking presents many challenges that are unique to acute care settings such as providing informed consent in a uniquely stressful and fast-paced environment and collecting, processing, and storing samples for tens of thousands of patients per year. Here, we describe the process by which the EMSB overcame these challenges and was integrated into clinical workflow allowing for operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at a reasonable cost. Other institutions can implement this template, further increasing the power of biobanking research to inform treatment strategies and interventions for common and uncommon phenotypes in acute care settings.