3D Printed Pharmaceutical Systems for Personalized Treatment in Metabolic Syndrome

The current healthcare system is widely based on the concept of “one size fit for all”, which emphasizes treating a disease by prescribing the same drug to all patients with equivalent doses and dosing frequency. This medical treatment scenario has shown varied responses with either no or weak pharmacological effects and exaggerated adverse reactions preceded by more patient complications. The hitches to the concept of “one size fits all” have devoted the attention of many researchers to unlocking the concept of personalized medicine (PM). PM delivers customized therapy with the highest safety margin for an individual patient’s needs. PM has the potential to revolutionize the current healthcare system and pave the way to alter drug choices and doses according to a patient’s clinical responses, providing physicians with the best treatment outcomes.

The 3D printing technique is a solid-form fabrication method whereby successive layers of materials based on computer-aided designs were deposited to form 3D structures. The 3D printed formulation achieves PM goals by delivering the desired dose according to patient needs and drug release profile to achieve a patient’s personal therapeutic and nutritional needs. This pre-designed drug release profile attains optimum absorption and distribution, exhibiting maximum efficacy and safety profiles. This review aims to focus on the role of the 3D printing technique as a promising tool to design PM in metabolic syndrome (MS).

1. Introduction

Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a cluster of metabolic abnormalities characterized by hypertension, central obesity, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia [1]. Patients with MS are closely linked to an elevated risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD) [2,3]. The prevalence of MS in the adult population ranges from 20 to 25%, and in children up to 19%, whereas in patients with type II diabetes mellitus, it can reach up to 80% [4,5,6,7,8]. The low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) followed by abdominal obesity is one of the observed components of MS. The dominance of obesity and type II diabetes often parallels one of the consequences of MS [9]. Patients with MS are at high risk of cardiovascular disease and neurological disorders.

According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, about 422 million people are suffering from diabetes worldwide [10]. The literature review conceals that Saudi Arabia has the highest prevalence of diabetes and a high rate of obesity, affecting more than one-third of the adult population [11]. The other components of MS were also reaching rising heights in Saudi Arabia, the predisposing kingdom as one of the top countries with the highest prevalence of MS [12]. A study showed a 39.8% prevalence of MS in Saudi Arabia according to Adult Treatment Panel III criteria and 31.6% according to International Diabetes Federation criteria [13]. The treatment of MS aims to treat individual components of MS, including antihypertensive, hypoglycemic, and anti-diabetic drugs. With the current conventional medication system, patients with MS were exposed to multidrug therapies with frequent dosing. This exposes the patient with MS to high financial burdens.

Moreover, the conventional drug formulations are also regimented with “fit to all” dosage strength. Therefore, clinicians have limited options to fit the dose as per the patient’s requirements [14]. This limitation in dose calibration may lead drug treatment to sub-therapeutic or potentially toxic levels [15]. This scenario has led the focus of researchers toward the concept of PM to tailor the dose as per the individual patient requirement. To identify the individual patient requirement, a study on pharmacogenomics has been taken into consideration to assess the genetic variability of an individual patient and their response to medication. This factor has been recognized as the key to ensuring drug safety via PM. PM is considered to be more precise, safer, not expose the patients to unnecessarily high doses, efficacious with improved patient compliance, and cost effective [16].

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Alqahtani, A.A.; Ahmed, M.M.; Mohammed, A.A.; Ahmad, J. 3D Printed Pharmaceutical Systems for Personalized Treatment in Metabolic Syndrome. Pharmaceutics 2023, 15, 1152.
https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics15041152

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