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Okay, I am going to need to see a show of hands here today. How many of you would be interested in knowing with over 80 percent certainty that you will die at some point in the next 10 years?
Anyone?
I ask this terrifying question because scientists in Germany have now come up a blood test which can do exactly that: predict with more than 80% accuracy whether or not you’re going to die in the next 10 years.
Awesome, right? Thanks again, Germany.
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Daily Mail reports…
Scientists in Germany uncovered 14 biomarkers in blood that appear to affect the risk of death, after analysing 44,000 people.
The biomarkers are associated with everything from immunity and glucose control to circulating fat and inflammation.
A trial of the biomarkers found they were 83 per cent accurate at predicting whether someone would die in the following two to 16 years.
The hope is that the results from this study will eventually lead to a blood test that can be used to guide a patient’s treatment.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing analzyed the blood of these 44,000 adults ranging in age from 18 to 109-years-old, and then looked at follow-up period of two to 16 years. In that period, 5,512 of the participants died.
Within the participants’ blood samples, the team looked for ‘metabolic biomarkers’ that were higher in those who lived longer.
They identified 14 markers that were found in both the men and women, as well as across all ages. These biomarkers were combined into a test.
To assess its effectiveness, the researchers first scored the participants’ risk of death based on ‘conventional factors’.
These included BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, alcohol consumption and smoking, as well as any cancer or heart disease diagnosis.
The team of researchers then scored the participants’ mortality risk according to the biomarkers in the new blood test.
Dr. Amanda Heslegrave, researcher at the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London, said that while the study “shows this type of profiling can be useful, they do point out importantly it would need further work to develop a score at the individual level that would be useful in real-life situations.”
Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at The Open University, called it a “solid and interesting piece of research,” but added, “it doesn’t go beyond investigating the plausibility of setting up a system for predicting risk of death.”
“It’s an exciting step, but it’s not ready yet,” added Heslegrave.
Oh, thank God.