[Advances in metabolism and nutrition 2011 and the route to personalized treatment]

Current model of metabolic and nutritional disorders management utilizes modern techniques that promote some of the nutritional techniques to pharmacoteherapy. This approach is demonstrated on an example of multiple organ failure and systemic inflammatory reaction managed with pharmacologically active nutritional substrates, such as arginine, glutamine, taurine, threonine and cysteine. Treatment of sarcopenia in older age is also discussed. Personalized nourishment as a component part of a wider term personalized medicine represents a new approach that requires recognition of individual differences in human genome and its expression. However, this approach also requires a change of attitude towards laboratory diagnostics and clinical practice, with patients and clinical prediction as the focal point. From this perspective, there is a need to replace current traditional laboratory tests with a new system that utilizes molecular biology and bioinformatics.