Content Highlights of the Year: a Look Over 2022 at Personalized Medicine

Keywords::

• colorectal cancer
• COVID-19
• health economics
• multigene testing
• personalized medicine
• pharmacogenomics
• race

We are delighted to welcome you to the 20th volume of Personalized Medicine and take the opportunity to introduce the new Commissioning Editor, Sarah Jones.

In this Foreword, we’d like to highlight some of the top content of the year taking into account readership, social media engagement and citations.

As always, we continue to encourage submissions to the journal centered around new advances in personalized medicine, pharmacogenomics, public health, genomics technologies and the translation of these to clinical contexts.

Content highlights of 2022

Our top five articles with the highest readership this year at the time of writing (October 2021) are summarized in Table 1. Topics that have interested readers this year include health plan coverage policies, implications of the 2020 US census for personalized medicine, and immunity genes and COVID-19.

Table 1. Top 2022 articles in Personalized Medicine by readership.^†

Rank	Article type	Title	Authors	Volume	Ref.
1	Short communication	Alignment of health plan coverage policies for somatic multigene panel testing with clinical guidelines in select solid tumors	Wong WB, Anina D, Lin C-W & Adams DV	19(3)	[1]
2	Commentary	The United States 2020 census data: implications for precision medicine and the research landscape	Roman YM	19(1)	[2]
3	Research article	Investigating underlying human immunity genes, implicated diseases and their relationship to COVID-19	Ahmed Z, Renart EB & Zeeshan S	19(3)	[3]
4	Review	How can we address the uncertainties regarding the potential clinical utility of polygenic score-based tests?	Moorthie S, Hall A, Babb de Villiers C et al.	19(3)	[4]
5	Research article	The frequency of major CYP2C19 genetic polymorphisms in women of Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander subgroups	Alrajeh KY & Roman YM	19(4)	[5]

† As of 27 October 2022.

The most read article of the year is a short communication assessing the alignment of multigene panel test (MGPT) coverage policies with clinical guidelines. The majority of plans were found to be more restrictive than National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines, with restrictions on tumor type and number of genes studied, showing variation by state. The study supports previous research showing that insurance coverage is a barrier to MGPT use, with health equity implications. The authors state that greater clarification of MGPT recommendations in clinical guidelines may encourage the alignment of coverage policies and improve patient outcomes [1].

The most read commentary is from a previous author of Personalized Medicine, Youssef Roman, and discusses changes in racial, ethnic and demographic make-up of the USA as detailed in the 2020 US census, and the implications of this for patient care. The article highlights the increased racial diversity and aging population in the USA and the benefits in medical care that pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine could allow [2].

The most read research article of the year was a study investigating the genetic susceptibility and variations among the DNA of healthy and COVID-19 diseased individuals. Understanding the functional impact of variations in the patient’s DNA can allow for precise diagnosis and more effective treatment [3].

The number of citations an article receives is also a strong indicator for the level of impact in the field (Table 2). The most cited article of the year is a case report of a patient with Lynch syndrome and metastatic colorectal carcinoma [6]. The paper details the use of immunohistochemistry (IHC) and microsatellite instability PCR (MSI-PCR) to detect mismatch repair in such patients. IHC gave an erroneous result in this patient, likely due to the presence of unusual mutations. However, MSI-PCR testing detected MSI, and the patient was treated with immunotherapy. The authors advocate for the use of both IHC and MSI-PCR in cases such as these.

Table 2. Top 2022 articles in Personalized Medicine by citations.^†

Rank	Article type	Title	Authors	Volume	Ref.
1	Case report	Microsatellite instability testing in colorectal patients with Lynch syndrome: lessons learned from a case report and how to avoid such pitfalls	Adeleke S, Haslam A, Choy A et al.	19(4)	[6]
2	Review	Genetic and genomic learning needs of oncologists and oncology nurses in the era of precision medicine: a scoping review	Rahman B, McEwen A, Phillips JL et al.	19(2)	[7]

† As of 27 October 2022.

An alternative metric that can be used to evaluate a paper’s impact is the Altmetric score (Table 3). This score evaluates the number of mentions a paper receives in news articles and social media posts to assess its impact. The paper with the highest Altmetric score was the previously described short communication by Wong et al. [1].

Table 3. Top 2022 articles in Personalized Medicine by social media and news engagement.^†

Rank	Article type	Title	Authors	Volume	Ref.
1	Short communication	Alignment of health plan coverage policies for somatic multigene panel testing with clinical guidelines in select solid tumors	Wong WB, Anina D, Lin C-W & Adams DV	19(3)	[1]
2	Short communication	A precision medicine approach to stress testing using metabolomics and microribonucleic acids	Limkakeng AT, Rowlette L-L, Hatch A et al.	19(4)	[8]
3	Research article	COVID-19 telehealth preparedness: a cross-sectional assessment of cardiology practices in the USA	Waldman CE, Min JH, Wassif H et al.	19(5)	[9]

† As of 27 October 2022.

Looking forward

In 2023 we will be running a Special Focus Issue in collaboration with the HEcoPerMed consortium examining the health economics of personalized medicine. The focus will look at interpretations of guidance developed by the consortium related to selected case studies of diabetes and two types of tumor agonistic treatments. It will place the health economics of these treatments into context in various jurisdictions (UK, The Netherlands and Hungary).

Conclusion

As with the previous years, we are open to all feedback from the personalized and precision medicine communities regarding the direction of our journal’s content, especially pertaining to any priority topics in the field. I would like to thank all of our invaluable authors, reviewers and editorial board members, as well as everyone who has read and engaged with the articles that we published in 2022. At Personalized Medicine we hope to be able to collaborate with you all during 2023 to continue providing the community with impactful research.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

S Jones is an employee of Future Medicine Ltd. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

S Jones is an employee of Future Medicine Ltd. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.