Abstract
Premature stratification of diseases is an essential aspect of a modern clinical setting that allows diagnosing the disease early, determining the risk factors, and making a more individual choice regarding therapy. The concept of biomarkers, which is a practical biological measure of physiological or pathological processes, has become a powerful means of recognising disease at subclinical levels and its potential course in a broad range of diseases. The present article reviews the diagnostic value of biomarkers in the early disease stratification, reviewing the evidence within the scopes of cardiovascular, metabolic, oncological, inflammatory, and neuropsychiatric. The review indicates the benefits of molecular, genetic, proteomic, and inflammatory biomarkers in improving diagnostic accuracy, aiding risk classification of the patient, and providing individualised treatment approaches. The focus is on clinical importance of biomarkers in enhancing the accuracy of prognosis, choice of therapies, and diagnostic uncertainty. Another area of innovation that is emerging and discussed in the article is artificial intelligence, precision medicine and digital health platforms, which are changing biomarker discovery, validation and clinical integration. Although the clinical importance of them is increasing, there are still issues concerning standardisation, validation, cost-effective, ethical use, and reasonable access. These are the challenges that need to be overcome in order to translate the research on biomarkers into practise. Altogether, the synthesis provides insights into the central role of biomarkers in the development of early stratification of diseases and underlines their incorporation in the evidence-based, patient-centred healthcare systems.