Over 60 diseases can be predicted just by looking at proteins in the blood, a study published Monday finds. These proteins provided more accurate predictions for 52 out of 67 diseases than current clinical tests. “Measuring one protein for a specific reason, such as troponin to diagnose a heart attack, is standard clinical practice.
We are extremely excited about the opportunity to identify new markers for screening and diagnosis from the thousands of proteins circulating and now measurable in human blood,” lead author professor Claudia Langenberg, director of the Precision Healthcare University Research Institute at Queen Mary University of London, said in a press release. Postdoctoral researcher Julia Carrasco-Zanini-Sanchez, who is also the study’s first author, told The Epoch Times that the study was prompted by her team’s prior research on a disease related to impaired glucose control. “[The condition] is basically a form of prediabetes that you can only detect when you do what’s called an oral glucose tolerance test, but not through HBA1c (blood glucose testing) or fasting glucose testing,” she said.
“We started working with proteomics (large-scale study of proteins) to try to develop a test ...
to predict the outcome of this oral glucose tolerance test without having to perform it because it’s routinely not done in clinical practice.” Ms. Carrasco said that their prior study led them to wonder if other diseases could be predicted using proteins.
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