The researchers predicted the onset of 67 diseases, outperforming current standard models.
A joint study conducted by University College London (UCL), GSK, Queen Mary University of London, University of Cambridge and the Berlin Health Institute at the Charité University School of Medicine in Germany has revealed that proteins in the blood may be able to predict the onset of a range of diseases.
The published research results Nature Medicine It could bring new predictive possibilities to the treatment and diagnosis of a wide range of diseases, including multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, motor neuron disease, pulmonary fibrosis and dilated cardiomyopathy.
Leveraging the UK Biobank Pharmaceutical Proteomics Project, the researchers used data on 3,000 plasma proteins from more than 40,000 randomly selected participants linked to electronic health records.
Using advanced analytical techniques to measure thousands of proteins in a drop of blood, the researchers identified each disease among the 5-20 proteins most important for prediction, and predicted the onset of 67 diseases, outperforming models based on standard clinically recorded information.
Spiros Denaksas, Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of London (UCL) Institute of Health Informatics, commented: “Identifying individuals at high risk of disease through novel markers is one of the cornerstones of medicine. Current efforts tend to focus on one (or a few) diseases at a time, due to the limited data available.”
This new discovery opens up new possibilities for predicting the onset of a wide range of diseases, including rare conditions that can usually be diagnosed quickly.
The researchers aim to validate their findings in different populations, including those with and without symptoms, those with or without symptoms of the disease, and across different ethnic groups.
“Our study demonstrates that the use of electronic data collected during clinical care can enable scientists to study hundreds of diseases simultaneously and discover new predictive traits,” Denaxas said.
In June, researchers from UCL and Great Ormond Street Hospital developed a new blood test that can identify children with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a rare genetic heart condition that affects up to 1,000 children in the UK.
