Scientists have developed a way to predict death using a blood test

Scientists are developing a way to help find out when a person dies, just by using a blood test. Writes about this Time.

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Although death is inevitable, knowing when it will happen is not necessary. Yet scientists are trying to develop a test that could reliably and easily predict how long a person will live—or, technically, how healthy they are and therefore how vulnerable they may be to major mortality risk factors.

Blood tests are the most likely route to such a test, since blood samples are easy to obtain and laboratories equipped to handle them are common.

Recent discoveries are described in a new article published in the journal Nature Communications by a group led by Joris Dilen, a doctoral student from the Max Planck Institute for Aging Biology (Germany) and P. Elin Slagbuom, head of the Department of Molecular Epidemiology at the Medical Center of the University of Leiden (Netherlands).

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Researchers report that in a group of more than 44 000 healthy patients, their blood count was approximately 80% accurate in predicting the risk of mortality over 5-10 years.

Patients between the ages of 18 and 109 years provided blood samples and monitored health events for 16 years. The researchers analyzed a group of 226 so-called metabolites, or arkers, which from various cells and tissues of the body enter the bloodstream.

From this collection of markers, the team narrowed the list to 14, which, as they determined, could, when interacting with or along with the gender of a person, give a fairly clear picture of the risk to the health of each person and, therefore, their risk of dying in the next 5-10 years .

They achieved this by comparing those who died during the study with those who did not die, and highlighting which components in their blood differed in statistically significant amounts. The relationship between the latest 14 factors and mortality remained strong even after scientists considered potential confounding factors that also affect survival, such as age, gender, and cause of death.

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“We want to solve the problem of people's health vulnerabilities that are hidden and that doctors can't see on the outside,” says Slugboum. "I'm still surprised by the fact that in a group of people you could take one blood sample at one point in time in their life and it could say something meaningful about their mortality in the next 5 to 10 years."

Both Dilen and the Slabboom emphasize that this test is not yet ready for use by doctors in the clinic with its patients, but that it does create the basis for further research.

A possible test may be most useful at first for evaluating elderly patients and making decisions about treatment, because 14 metabolites are a number of processes, including the breakdown of fat and glucose, inflammation and fluid balance in the body, which affect a number of chronic diseases, as well as a person’s ability recover from illness or injury.

Researchers at Leiden University are currently studying the test to find out if it can help doctors predict which patients with hip fractures may experience complications during recovery from surgery.

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Another study considers whether the test can predict which people with kidney failure are more likely to develop dementia or side effects, such as delirium, as a result of their treatment; this information can help doctors better adjust dosage and treatment decisions.

The researchers also hope to work with large data banks around the world to further validate the results. “We look at this as a baseline,” says Slugboum, “we don’t look at this test as a finished product.”

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