A simple blood test to detect how fast internal organs are ageing helped flag increased risks for 30 diseases including lung cancer and cardiovascular conditions, researchers have found.
A study by an international team of scientists revealed surprising results including that the people most susceptible to dementia were those whose immune systems had aged faster than usual, rather than those who had suffered a swifter ageing of their brains in mid-life.
The work highlights how researchers are able to make increasingly sophisticated measurements of ageing and link these with potential health threats.
“We found that a quick and easy blood test can identify whether a specific organ is ageing faster than expected,” said Mika Kivimaki, a professor at University College London and lead author of the paper published in The Lancet Digital Health on Tuesday. “In years to come, blood tests like this could play a crucial role in preventing numerous diseases.”
Kivimaki and colleagues from Stanford University in the US, French public health research institute Inserm and Helsinki university used data from a study running since 1985. They analysed blood samples collected in the late 1990s from more than 6,200 middle-aged adults to determine the biological age of nine organs — including the heart, lungs and liver — and the entire body.
The researchers examined organ-specific biological markers of ageing to see how they differed from the participants’ chronological ages. They then reviewed their health status over the following 20 years to see what diseases they suffered.
They discovered that a more rapidly ageing heart predicted a much increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, while accelerated lung ageing heightened the risk of respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.
The work also showed how the close co-ordination of organs’ functions meant ageing in one could cause problems in others. The researchers found that accelerated kidney ageing added to other risks such as those of vascular disease, type 2 diabetes and liver conditions.
The research benefited from advances in blood testing that enable testing for thousands of proteins in a single sample.
“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,” said Kivimaki.
The study was “good quality” and based on “solid” data but the blood analysis was likely to remain expensive for some time, said David J Clancy, lecturer in biogerontology at Lancaster University. Kivimaki acknowledged the full test was “very expensive” but said costs were low per protein.
Clancy said the costs meant the test would perhaps be most suitable for those already suspected of being at high risk because of reported lifestyle factors, genetic predisposition or other clinical indicators.
“I strongly suspect health economics studies would argue against large-scale screening at this point,” he added. “Of course for the financially comfortable, health conscious and curious segments of society I’m sure private provision will soon appear more widely.”