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No one can see in the future, but the blood flowing through your veins can hold important secrets about your future health – or lack thereof.
In a new study, researchers identified 14 biomarkers in human blood related to all-cause mortality, which could help them predict the risk of death among patients in the next five to ten years.
"If we can identify vulnerable seniors with this blood-based measure, the next step is to anticipate this vulnerability," says molecular epidemiologist and aging researcher, Eline Slagboom of the Medical Center of the 39, University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
In the current state of affairs, mortality predictions in older patients become relatively robust in the last year of the patient's life, due to the amount of clinical data available on the person, which allows for better patient outcomes. estimate health status and short-term prognosis.
But what about longer-term forecasts that attempt to look further into the patient's future? It is there that it becomes more complicated.
"There is no consensus on the ultimate set of predictive factors for long-term (5 to 10 years) mortality risk," explain Slagboom and his team in their new article, pointing out that Conventional mortality rates at middle age, such as blood pressure and cholesterol – do not really match the risk in elderly, elderly patients.
In an attempt to complete the chart, the team searched in blood samples from 44,168 people from 12 different cohorts. The participants were between 18 and 109 years old and were of European descent.
In the follow-up studies, 5,512 of these participants died.
Looking through the data – which contained measurements on 226 metabolic biomarkers in participants' blood – researchers identified 14 biomarkers independently associated with mortality.
To evaluate the extent to which these biomarkers might indicate the real risk of death, the researchers analyzed them against a cohort of more than 7,600 Finnish patients studied in 1997.
Of this cohort, 1,213 participants died during follow-up, and the 14 biomarkers predicted death in the next five to ten years with an accuracy of about 83%, exceeding expectations with less specific conventional risk factors.
"These biomarkers clearly improve the prediction of mortality risk at five and ten years compared to conventional risk factors for all ages," the researchers write.
"These results suggest that metabolic biomarker profiling could potentially be used to guide patient care, if validated in relevant clinical settings."
If this validation were to occur, it could prove to be an extremely powerful tool in the future to guide health practitioners, but the experts who comment on the study say that much more work is needed before this type of test can be used in clinical settings.
"We would need to see: validation to ensure repeatability in different labs, production of reference samples to test it on a continuous basis, work to make individual score possible, validation in other cohorts and validation of all the components of the panel ", The neurologist Amanda Heslegrave of the Dementia Research Institute UK of University College London did not participate in the study.
"So, it's an exciting step, but it's not ready yet."
It is also interesting to note that the search only concerns participants of European origin. As a result, the results may not provide reliable information on the future health of people of different ethnic origins.
The researchers also recognize that the number of biomarkers captured in their platform so far represents "only a fraction of the metabolites in human serum", meaning that future efforts with more advanced spectrometry systems should inevitably provide a more robust predictor.
Despite these limitations, it is clear that this research track could provide us with information about the potential health and prospects of patients – forecasts for the next ten years and perhaps even more in the future, a day.
"We want to fight the vulnerability of people's health that is hidden and that doctors can not see from the outside," Slagboom said. TIME.
"I'm always surprised by the fact that in a group of people, you can take a single blood sample at some point in their lives, which would mean something significant about their five to ten year mortality risk."
The results are reported in Nature Communications.
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