Elucidation of endophenotypes in Madhumeha vis- a- vis Prakriti through Ayurgenomics approach

In the recent times, there has been a steady rise in prevalence of common diseases like diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular disorders, epilepsy, stroke, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in the world. Nearly 1% of the world population suffers from these diseases and in some cases like diabetes and obesity; the numbers are considerably higher and also dangerously on the rise. With the increase in average life expectancy of humans, this has become a major concern since most of these common diseases extend throughout life and require long-term medication often associated with added complications and/or expensive interventions.

Ayurveda, the Ancient Indian System of Medicine which forms a living tradition of health and healing even today has a basic tenet of predictive and personalized medicine. Ayurveda/ traditional knowledge based drug discovery is being considered as an attractive option especially for complex and life-style related diseases like Diabetes, Asthma and Cardiovascular diseases including cancer.

Identifying factors that predispose individuals to these diseases and predict their progression as well as development of personalized healthcare to minimize side-effects is the need of the hour. In the realm of modern predictive medicine, several approaches are being attempted to identify genetic variations that are responsible for susceptibility to diseases and differential response to drugs. An integration of Ayurveda and genomics is being sought to help fill the gap. This integrative approach can accelerate discovery of markers for predictive, preventive and personalized medicine.

Briefly, in this approach it was observed that normal healthy individuals of contrasting Prakriti types i.e. Vata, Pitta and Kapha, identified on the basis of Ayurveda, exhibit striking differences at the biochemical and genome-wide gene expression level. The researchers at CSIR- IGIB published (Prasher et al, Journal of Translational medicine, September 2008, Aggarwal et al PNAS 2010) these results of gene expression and biochemical correlates of Vata Pitta and Kapha constitution types in 2008, in Journal of translational medicine. With the advent of newer technologies, the levels of enquiries into their mechanisms of actions have gone at the molecular level. This has also lead to discovery of many novel classes of molecules into pharmacology.