Pioneering test predicts whether we will get sick due to old age

I read an article today on onmed.gr and I wanted to share it with you. It is about an innovative test that predicts whether we will get sick due to old age.

Age alone does not say much, as one can have a healthy and problem-free old age or the exact opposite. A blood test under development aspires to predict just that, distinguishing a person's chronological from biological age, that is, how many years they have lived from how old, debilitated and disease-prone their body actually is.

The test measures a series of biomarkers (chemicals) that together give an estimate of a person's risk of developing later in life diseases related to old age. Chronological age alone does not necessarily give a reliable picture of future health problems, whereas the biomarkers analyzed by the test provide a more comprehensive picture of the risks of various diseases or early death within the next eight years.

The researchers, led by Professor of Biostatistics Paola Sebastiani of the School of Public Health and Professor Thomas Perls of the Boston University School of Medicine, who made the relevant publication in the journal Cellular Aging Aging Cell, measured the level of 19 biomarkers in blood samples from nearly 5,000 people aged 30 to 110 years.

"These biomarkers reflect differences in how people age and hold great promise in predicting healthy old age, changes in mental and physical functioning, survival and the onset of age-related diseases such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer, long before any clinical signssaid Dr. Perls.

Biomarkers cover a wide range of body functions, such as the immune system, endocrine, metabolism, etc. With the help of a special algorithm, doctors can correlate the levels of various biomarkers in the blood test with the probability of various diseases and with the overall level of future health.

Researchers classify people based on 26 "signatures" that emerge from the tests. About half of people fall into an average "signature," but smaller groups have other "signatures" that deviate from the average: for example, one signature group refers to people who will age healthily, while another refers to people who are at risk to develop dementia.

The test will need to be tested in larger groups of people before it can be used clinically. Already researchers are looking for other biomarkers that could be included in it to increase its utility.

In the future, the test can also be used for the testing of new drugs, so that it can be established earlier than today whether a drug under development benefits or not the target group of the population.

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