Death Test
The death of a person within the next five years can be predicted by a blood test
Nadezhda Markina, Newspaper.Roo
Finnish blood test scientists can predict which of the healthy people today will die in the next five years. It sounds scary, but such an analysis of the content of four biomarkers by Johannes Kettunen and his colleagues from the Institute of Molecular Medicine really developed and presented in the journal PLOS Medicine (Fischer et al., Biomarker Profiling by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy for the Prediction of All-Cause Mortality: An Observational Study of 17,345 Persons). But experts cannot yet say what kind of disease a person will die from.
The results of the "death test" were obtained on the basis of 17 thousand initially healthy people, in whose blood the content of more than 100 chemicals was determined. The subjects who donated blood were followed for five years. During this time 684 people died from cardiovascular diseases, cancer and other diseases. The analysis showed that there was an increased content of four biomarkers in their blood. These include albumin protein, alpha-1-acid glycoprotein, citrates (citric acid salts) and very low density lipoprotein particle size.
The work of Finnish scientists was a continuation of the work of Estonian researchers, who were the first to receive sensational results on a sample of 9842 people, initially healthy, of whom 508 died within five years. Comparing the level of all 106 substances in their blood and in the blood of those who survived, the Estonians identified the same four fatal biomarkers. The results were so incredible that Finnish scientists decided to repeat the work and tested another 7503 healthy subjects. 176 of them died within five years. The increased content of the same four biomarkers in their blood was confirmed. Although, according to the head of the work, Professor Marcus Perola, they did not expect that the results would be confirmed, and they were quite amazed by this.
To determine the content of substances in the blood, scientists used methods of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.
The statistical analysis took into account all additional factors that somehow affect life expectancy: age, body weight, smoking, alcohol consumption, etc. But it didn't change the results with biomarkers. In the Estonian group, 20% of people with the highest indicators had a 19 times higher risk of dying than 20% of people with the lowest indicators themselves.
"It is especially interesting that these biomarkers are associated with the risk of death from very different causes – from cardiovascular, oncological and completely other diseases," emphasizes Johannes Kettunen. "They seem to reflect the general vulnerability of the body."
Biomarkers are biological molecules contained in blood plasma or tissues that indicate some kind of malfunction in the body. Scientists have been using biomarkers for some individual diseases for a long time, for example, it is known that elevated cholesterol levels indicate a risk of heart disease and atherosclerosis. But until now there were no biomarkers for the risk of death from any diseases.
In the article, the authors discuss exactly how these biochemical parameters are associated with fatal risks for the body. For example, the level of alpha-1-acid glycoprotein increases with infection and inflammation. It is known that it reflects the mortality of elderly people from cardiovascular diseases and the prognosis for certain types of cancer. The albumin content in plasma is a routine blood test, reflects the work of the liver and kidneys and, again, inflammatory processes. Lipoproteins are associated with cardiovascular diseases, and the particle size of very low-density lipoproteins reflects their metabolism. Citrates (citric acid salts) play an important role in the biochemical energy cycle, although scientists have not yet fully understood the relationship of their content with specific pathologies.
Researchers believe that in the future, a "death test" should be carried out in various risk groups in order to identify any emerging diseases long before the onset of symptoms and prevent them. Although they recognize that there is an ethical problem today: how will a person take the news that he will die soon, and what should he do with this information?
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru27.02.2014