Scientists have developed a blood test that was stunningly accurate at predicting when people will die. The test showed great results in predicting death within five to 10 years.
The groundbreaking discovery was made by a team in Germany, who found they could estimate a person's risk of death within the 5- to 10-year window with over 80% accuracy, Fox News reported.
The test relies on 14 specific biomarkers, including, glucose control, inflammation and circulating fat. For the trial, researchers gathered blood samples of 44,168 participants aged 18 to 109 and tracked their health events for 16 years. Researchers screened for conventional factors of death then applied the biomarkers from the new blood test.
Based on the information they had gathered, the scientists could predict whether someone was going to die in the next ten years with 83 percent accuracy.
"We subsequently show that the prediction accuracy of 5- and 10-year mortality based on a model containing the identified biomarkers and sex is better than that of a model containing conventional risk factors for mortality," researchers noted in the study published in Nature Communications.
Dr. Amanda Heslegrave, a researcher at the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London, explained how biomarkers offered greater insight into what is happening in health and disease.
"The large numbers in the study are good and also the fact that they have a large number for outcome – in this case mortality - makes the data more viable," she said, according to Fox News.
Leading the study is Dr. Joris Deelen, who noted that the test was a way to monitor a person's current health and their physical vulnerability, and was not intended to predict when someone was going to die.
"If the blood test indicates your physical vulnerability, if it tells you how long you’ll live – and your family see that and you change your lifestyle – you could live twice as long."
The test is not yet ready for doctors to use.
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