Blood Test Might Help Doctors Spot Multiple Diseases

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Blood Test Might Help Doctors Spot Multiple Diseases







By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Dec. 12, 2024 -- A blood draw is a typical part of a person's regular check-up.

However, a blood sample might contain much more helpful information about a person's health than doctors currently receive.

A new study shows that a routine part of a blood test called the complete blood count (CBC) could help doctors identify or predict many diseases, including heart problems, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and kidney disease, researchers reported Dec. 11 in the journal Nature.

"Complete blood counts are common tests, and our study suggests CBCs vary a lot from person to person even when completely healthy, and a more personalized and precision medicine approach could give more insight into a person's health or disease," said senior researcher Dr. John Higgins, a pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

In background notes, numbers of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets in a person's blood.

Because these blood cells circulate throughout the body, the test could be used to provide timely information on a wide range of diseases.

Using blood drawn from more than 25,000 patients, researchers discovered that every individual has a "set point" for each part of their blood makeup as measured by a complete blood count.

Researchers said that by using these set points, doctors can diagnose early-stage diseases in otherwise healthy people.

For example, researchers say a lower hemoglobin concentration in the blood is associated with an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and heart failure. Hemoglobin is the component in red blood cells that carries oxygen to tissues throughout the body.

Other info that might be gleaned from a CBC:

  • Increased levels of white blood cells are linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes

  • The size of red blood cells can be used to assess the risk of osteoporosis and irregular heart rhythm

  • The percentage of red blood cells in blood can be used to detect kidney disease

Researchers added that even a person's overall death risk can be calculated using the test.

Excessively high or low blood count set points in apparently healthy people were associated with an absolute 10-year risk of death that varied by more than 5%.

"Set points seem to identify large fractions [more than 20%] of healthy adults in our study population with more than 2% to 5% increase in absolute 10-year risk of all-cause mortality or diagnosis of major diseases, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes and other conditions for which early intervention can be effective," researchers wrote.

These findings are consistent with earlier studies, as noted.

For example, lower hemoglobin has been associated with heart attack outcomes, red blood cell size with hip fractures, and white blood counts with diabetes.

"Although further work is needed to understand the mechanisms generating these associations, this study shows that for multiple diseases, set points produce a 2- to 4-fold relative risk stratification, which is comparable to that provided by common disease screening factors including family history and some genetic mutations," the researchers concluded.


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