The levels of certain proteins in the blood can indicate whether a person is more likely to develop diseases such as cancer, heart disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis over the next decade.
Recent studies have shown that elevated levels of certain proteins present in our blood can lead to a higher risk of various types of diseases. Early diagnosis can help start appropriate treatment earlier, increasing the chances of recovery.
Many diseases can be diagnosed with a blood test.
The study was published in the journal medRxiv. Claudia Langenberg of the University of Cambridge and her colleagues conducted the study based on medical records and data collected from more than 41,000 people. They contained information about approximately 3,000 proteins found in the blood. About 70 percent of the participants, the researchers built statistical models to determine the risk of developing various conditions over a 10-year follow-up period, from rare diseases to common ones.
In contrast, testing of the remaining 30 percent of participants showed that combining the protein model with standard clinical models determined the risk of developing 52 conditions.
Is protein analysis more efficient than clinical models?
In the study group, researchers identified about 70 percent of participants who developed dilated cardiomyopathy (the walls of the heart muscle become stretched and thin) and pulmonary fibrosis (scarring of lung tissue). In contrast, clinical models alone have identified only 30 percent of people with these diseases. What’s more, the combined approach was able to diagnose twice as many people who developed bone marrow cancer and motor neuron disease as compared to using clinical models alone.
Combination of clinical models and protein analysis
When the researchers combined clinical and protein-based models, they misclassified people as having a high risk of a certain disease 10% of the time. Experts believe that the number of such false diagnoses that will be acceptable will vary depending on how valuable early detection of risk is, as well as the prevalence of the disease.
What do the findings of the study mean in practice? If these blood tests were combined with the clinical risk factor analysis currently used in clinics, people who are at risk for certain diseases could be screened more often, which in turn would have a chance of detecting the disease earlier, the researchers say. and apply the appropriate treatment. However, the study needs to be continued as the participants were mostly European and lived in the UK, which in turn may not lead to the same conclusions for more ethnically diverse populations.
Source: Wprost
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