Scientists claim to have developed a test for determining the chance of a healthy person dying from any medical condition within the next five years.
The blood test examines four "biomarkers" in the body which, when taken together, indicate a level of "frailty." Those with biomarkers out of kilter were five times more likely to die within five years of the blood test. The research was conducted by Finnish and Estonian researchers.
"What is especially interesting is that these biomarkers reflect the risk for dying from very different types of diseases such as heart disease or cancer," said Dr. Johannes Kettunen of the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Finland. "We believe that in the future these measures can be used to identify people who appear healthy but in fact have serious underlying illnesses and guide them to proper treatment."
A biomarker is a molecule found in body fluids, blood or tissues that indicates an unusual condition, process or disease. For the study, published this week in the journal PLOS Medicine, researchers took blood samples from more than 17,000 generally healthy people. The group was screened for 100 biomarkers and monitored over the course of five years.
During that time, 684 died from illnesses including cardiovascular disease and cancer. They all showed similar levels of four biomarkers: albumin, alpha-1-acid glycoprotein, citrate and very-low-density lipoprotein particles.
One in five of those with the highest biomarker scores died within a year of the study.
Even after weeding out every test subject who had diabetes, cancer or cardiovascular disease, the researchers found that the biomarkers wound up predicting death over the five year time frame in both healthy and sick people. The researchers repeated their test on a different population group, examining almost 8,500 Finnish men and women around the ages of 25 and 75. They found that the biomarkers were equally accurate in predicting death in that group of individuals.
"It was astonishing that these biomarkers appeared to actually predict mortality independent of disease," said research Professor Markus Perola of the Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland. "These were all apparently healthy people but to our surprise it appears these biomarkers show an undetected frailty which people did not know they had."
Conceivably, tests such as the one used in the study could be used to give a person an early warning of a deadly condition. However, such a blood test is still a long way off from actually being able to be used.
