Neurogenomics: An Egyptian perspective

Abstract

In the beginning of the twenty-first century, the world celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of DNA. The discovery has led to enormous amounts of new knowledge, including the fact that the human genome has a physical size of 3 × 109 base pairs that encode and regulate approximately 32,000 genes. It has also spawned new fields, such as Genomics, which was born in Europe ( Goetz, 2004 ), and the sub-field neurogenomics, which examines the molecular mechanisms and the interplay of this molecular information and health interventions and environmental factors of neurological disorders. The West has been able to advance neurogenomics, establishing high quality research institutions and educating health care professionals to incorporate new knowledge into diagnosing and testing patients. Egypt, however, has been far less able. The genetic research and services disparity between developed countries and the developing ones, specifically Egypt, is huge. In Egypt, as with other developing countries, genomic research capabilities and basic genetic services are considerably limited by infrastructure deficits. Genetic screening, and counseling, is common practice in the West, but not so in Egypt and other developing countries. Prenatal genetic screening for hemoglobin disorders, for instance, exists in most developed countries, but not so in developing world. Furthermore, the disparity in terms of genetically literate healthcare professionals and cost of care is substantial ( Skirton, H., et al., 2010, Thurston, V.C., et al., 2007). In high-resource countries, the treatment cost is covered by medical insurance, while in lower-income countries the cost falls directly on families.). These gaps between developed and developing countries have been discussed in detail by WHO expert groups ( World Health Organization,, 1999, World Health Organization,, 2000, World Health Organization Advisory Committee on Health Research) and others ( Alwan, A. and Modell, B., 2003, James, C., et al., 1998, Penchaszadeh, V., 2000, Wonkam, A., et al., 2006) who recommended several steps for developing countries, including Egypt, that wish to incorporate molecular techniques into research and health systems. Here the small-scale efforts for Geneva-Yaounde cooperation to train Cameroonian medical geneticist that may serve as a useful model for developing health professional education because it is easy, affordable with direct benefits ( Gerber, 2005 ). In sum, neurogenomics in Egypt lags far behind that in the better resourced of the world.