Biotechnology in healthcare Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Biotechnology in healthcare - Essay Example Biotechnology has been around in some form for a very long time, but in the last few decades it has changed drastically to become a modern science that is crucial to the determination of the molecular mechanisms behind disease. Early biotechnology included baking bread and making such fermented food products as beer, wine, cheese, and yoghurt; all of these processes could be considered biotechnology as they require the use of bacterial enzymes to complete. However, this is not what most scientists today consider to be biotechnology, and the first modern use of the term ‘biotechnology’ was in a 1919 publication by Karl Ereky. Ereky was a Hungarian engineer and economist. In his paper on biotechnology, he predicted an â€Å"age of biochemistry† which would rival previous technological periods in human history (Bruggemeier 2006). Given the current state of modern medicine and pharmacology, it seems that Ereky's prediction is correct; biochemistry and its brain child, biotechnology, are the way of the future. Modern medicine would be nearly impossible without the many almost miraculous discoveries of biotechnology. Biotechnology has infiltrated medical practice at all levels, from basic preventative care by family doctors and general practitioners all the way to specialized diagnostic techniques and highly individualized and effective treatments. The article seeks to provide basic and applied information on how biotechnology has been useful in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease. Prevention: Preventive medicine is the prospective treatment of disease, an attempt to stop an illness from occurring before it starts and to keep patients in an overall healthy state. Prevention of the disease and/or illness is the objective. This is done through screening patient populations for high-risk groups and providing education and early interventions to those patients, and by providing general prophylactic care such as vaccination or vitamins. Biotechnology in preventative care is best exemplified through the recent advantages of vaccination. A classic example is the vaccination of humans with attenuated bacteria in order to control diseases caused by such bacteria. This type of vaccination with attenuated bacterial vaccines or its modified derivatives to express antigens from the pathogens has the merit of inducing protective immunity to those pathogens (Curtiss, 2002). Furthermore, vaccination with live recombinant attenuated bacterial antigen affords the in vivo production of the antigen in immunized individual long after immunization. This is an effective yet inexpensive vaccination approach. Vaccination is not restricted to the bacteria. Other pathogenic organism, such as viruses, fungi, etc can be use. For instance, a live, oral attenuated vaccine developed from the pentavalent rotavirus vaccine (RV5) has been shown in a trial study conducted in Finland and the United States to prevent 98% of severe rotavirus diarrh ea (Patel et al. 2009). As shown in Table 1, an association did exist between the rotavirus vaccine and the rotavirus disease (Patel et al. 2009). Table 1. Association between Rotavirus Vaccination and Rotavirus Disease Requiring Hospital Admission or Intravenous Hydration adapted from Patel et al. 2009. The ability to sequence viral genomes offers another vaccination approach that applied biotechnology fundamentals. Understanding the genome of a virus means researchers