New blood test reveals which of your organs are ‘ageing fastest’ and are likely to fail in the next 15 years
A BLOOD test can show you which of your organs is ageing fastest, a study shows.
The tests could help spot who has a higher risk of developing diseases in that particular organ within 15 years, US researchers found.
They could predict the progression of conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and help people get treatment before they get sick, they suggested.
Professor Tony Wyss-Coray, of Stanford University, said: “We can estimate the biological age of an organ in an apparently healthy person.
“That, in turn, predicts a person’s risk for disease related to that organ.”
The study, published in Nature, used AI to assess protein levels in blood, using the test.
They focused on 11 key organs, organ systems or tissues, including the brain, heart, lung, kidney, liver, pancreas and intestine, as well as the immune system, muscle, fat and vasculature.
To train their algorithm, the team checked the levels of almost 5,000 proteins in the blood of 1,398 healthy patients at Knight Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centre.
They ranged in age from 20 to 90, but were mostly in the mid to late stages of life.
Researchers flagged all the proteins whose genes were four times more highly activated in one organ compared with others.
They found 858 organ-specific proteins and trained the algorithm to guess a person’s age based on them.
Overall, the team tested their algorithm on a total of 5,676 patients across five cohorts.
Almost 20 per cent of patients showed “strongly accelerated age” in one organ, while 1.7 per cent showed ageing in multiple organs.
Researchers said accelerated organ ageing “confers a 20 to 50 per cent higher mortality risk”.
Those with accelerated heart ageing were 250 per cent more likely to have heart failure, while accelerated brain and vascular ageing could predict Alzheimer’s progression better than the best current blood-based biomarker.
Professor Wyss-Coray said: “If we can reproduce this finding in 50,000 or 100,000 individuals it will mean that by monitoring the health of individual organs in apparently healthy people, we might be able to find organs that are undergoing accelerated ageing in people’s bodies, and we might be able to treat people before they get sick.”
Around 944,000 Brits are currently living with dementia and experts predict the numbers will exceed one million by the end of the decade.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of the condition, and is thought to be caused by build-ups of proteins in the brain, including tau and amyloid.
The development of even more accurate and less invasive methods to detect signs of age-related disease will take us closer to curing them
Dr Leah Mursaleen, Alzheimer's Research UK
There is currently no cure for the disease, although three promising drugs to slow down its progress are currently in trials.
Dr Leah Mursaleen, of Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “The diseases that cause dementia – like Alzheimer’s – can begin in the brain decades before symptoms appear.
“New treatments on the horizon have only been shown to work in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, which is why we need to find simple methods to accurately identify those most at risk of developing the disease.
“This study suggests that looking at what’s in our blood can provide a vital ‘window’ to look at what’s happening deeper inside our body – including at the level of individual organs like the brain.
“It shows that markers in the blood can measure brain and blood vessel ageing and could potentially be used to predict Alzheimer’s and its progression.
“While this science is at an early stage, it has the potential to add to our growing toolkit of blood-based detection methods, many of which are edging closer to routine use.”
She added: “It’s likely that we’ll see the first blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease arrive on the NHS within the next five years.
“The development of even more accurate and less invasive methods to detect signs of age-related disease, including the earliest signs and progression of Alzheimer’s, will take us closer to curing them.
“Further work in this area is needed to develop and validate tools such as these, to help us get one step ahead of dementia.”
What are the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease?
In the early stages, the main symptom of Alzheimer's disease is memory lapses.
For example, someone with early Alzheimer’s disease may:
- forget about recent conversations or events
- misplace items
- forget the names of places and objects
- have trouble thinking of the right word
- ask questions repetitively
- show poor judgement or find it harder to make decisions
- become less flexible and more hesitant to try new things
There are often signs of mood changes, such as increasing anxiety or agitation, or periods of confusion.
Source: The NHS