New Delhi, Feb 26: A team of international researchers has developed a new blood test that could predict the risk of about 30 age-related conditions like lung cancer and heart disease that can appear decades later.
The blood test measures the age of different organs of the human body to predict the risk. The team including from the UK, France, and the US said the quick and easy blood test identifies whether a specific organ is ageing faster than expected — an advance that may pave the way for personalised prevention and treatment methods.
The findings based on 20 years of follow-up data revealed that a heart that aged more rapidly predicted a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, while accelerated lung ageing predisposed people to respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and lung cancer.
The highest risk of dementia was found in those whose immune systems aged faster than usual. Similarly, people with accelerated kidney ageing were more likely to later develop vascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver diseases, while biological ageing of nearly all organs predicted an increased risk of kidney disease.
Their study, published in The Lancet Digital Health, shows how accelerated ageing in specific organs can predict not only diseases affecting that organ but diseases across the rest of the body as well. “Our organs function as an integrated system, but they can age at different rates.
Ageing in particular organs can contribute to numerous ageing-related diseases, so it’s important for us to take care of all aspects of our health,” said lead author Professor Mika Kivimaki, from the Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London (UCL).
“I believe that in the future of health care, the prevention of age-related diseases could begin much earlier, prioritising those who would benefit most and tailoring interventions to individual risk profiles,” Kivimaki said.
he international research team, led by scientists from UCL Brain Sciences, Stanford University (US), Inserm (France), and the University of Helsinki (Finland), analysed blood samples collected in the late 1990s from over 6,200 middle-aged adults to determine the biological age of nine organs (heart, blood vessels, liver, immune system, pancreas, kidneys, lungs, intestines, and the brain) and for the entire body.
The researchers measured the gap between a person’s chronological (actual) age, and the assessed biological age of each of their organs as determined by markers of ageing specific to that organ, finding that organs often aged at different rates in the same person.
Participants’ health status was tracked for 20 years and by the end of the follow-up period, they were aged 65-89. Many had been diagnosed with at least one of the ageing-related diseases investigated in the study.
“We hope our findings could contribute to new ways of helping people stay healthy for longer as they age. Blood tests may advise whether a person needs to take better care of a particular organ, and potentially provide an early-warning signal that they may be at risk of a particular disease,” Kivimaki said.
IANS