Early detection is often crucial for the successful treatment of a disease. A new test could revolutionize it, and it only requires a drop of blood.
Our blood reveals a lot about our state of health, showing signs of organ damage, inflammation or metabolic dysfunction. But blood can also provide information about impending illnesses. This has already been proven for various types of cancer.
Now researchers have focused on the proteins in the blood and have come to astonishing results. They examined 2,900 proteins in over 40,000 blood samples from the UK Biobank – a large long-term observation of the health of now over 500,000 people.
Blood samples were taken from the selected subjects and linked to data on their health before, during and up to ten years after the blood sample was taken. The British scientists then investigated which specific proteins were associated with a particular disease. And finally, what the presence of these proteins in previous samples says about whether the disease can be predicted based on them.
The result is astonishing: “For 163 diseases, just five proteins were enough to perform as well as the clinical models – without any additional health information being required,” reports study leader Julia Carrasco-Zanini. “For 67 common and rare diseases, the evaluation of five to 20 blood proteins significantly improved the clinical models.”
To understand: Prediction models currently often refer to certain pre-existing conditions, lifestyle factors or specific blood values (sugar or cholesterol levels). The determination of individual proteins is also included. But now there are apparently thousands more new markers.
The diseases that can be predicted using the protein test include various types of cancer such as prostate cancer, multiple myeloma or non-Hodgkin lymphoma (blood cancers), the lung disease COPD, liver and kidney diseases, rheumatism or some heart diseases.
However, as the science magazine scinexx.de reports, there are also some medical conditions for which protein tests offer little advantage over existing methods. These include bacterial infections, benign colon polyps, osteoporosis and cataracts. “These diseases require samples from other tissues or completely different approaches in order to be better predicted,” say the researchers.
They unanimously see the research result as a major step in the new form of diagnostics. The test will now be tested on an even larger scale and within different population groups. Initially, the focus will be on “high priority” diseases, i.e. those that are likely to be serious, progress quickly or occur frequently.
