Scientists may have discovered a way to predict the future via biomarkers in human blood. Of course this would not be a Nostradamus-type prediction, but instead more of a ten-year forecast into a person health.
In a recently published study, scientists claim to have identified several biomarkers that coincide with mortality. The biomarkers are believed to hold the secrets of a person's risk of death in a five to 10-year window.
"If we can identify vulnerable elderly people with this blood-based measurement, then the next step is to anticipate this vulnerability," explains researcher Eline Slagboom from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands.
At present, doctors have the ability to predict an elderly person's remaining years in the short term due to an abundance of medical records. However, when we are looking at a long-term prognosis, that is a completely different ballgame.
"There is no consensus on the ultimate set of predictors of longer-term (5-10 years) mortality risk," Slagboom and her team explain in their new paper. The continue to cite that middle-aged people and the elderly do not typically have the same risk factors for mortality. The middle-aged are susceptible to blood pressure and cholesterol-related risks, as the leading causes of death in the elderly are heart disease and cancer.
Researchers also expanded their research to the study of blood samples from 44,168 individuals all of European descent and between the ages of 18 and 109. Of the 44,168 individuals, 5,512 were found to be deceased. Through further examination of the information, researchers were able to identify the 14 biomarkers independently associated with mortality.
In order to verify the scientists' theory, they then proceeded to test blood samples of over 7,600 Finnish patients. And again, of the 7,600 patients, 1,213 had passed during the follow-up study and the previously identified biomarkers had in fact, predicted their risk of mortality withinin a five to 10-year window and with an accuracy of nearly 83 percent.
"These biomarkers clearly improve risk prediction of five and 10-year mortality as compared to conventional risk factors across all ages," the researchers write.
"These results suggest that metabolic biomarker profiling could potentially be used to guide patient care, if further validated in relevant clinical settings."
Although the results of the research seem plausible, others in the field believe there is much more work needed before this method could be applied in everyday diagnosis.
"We'd need to see: validation to ensure repeatability in different labs, production of reference samples to test this on an ongoing basis, work to make the individual score possible, validation in other cohorts and validation of all components of the panel," says neurologist Amanda Heslegrave from the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London. She was not involved in the study.
"So, it's an exciting step, but it's not ready yet."
