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Ever get a surprise diagnosis? Ever wonder where it came from? Many people who develop diseases might wonder why that disease develop and why weren’t there any warning signs.  Well, it is very possible that the warning signs were there but weren’t detected because no one was looking for them. Early signs of disease can show up in the blood and the vital signs, rather than as physical symptoms, so a person might feel perfectly fine and yet have the initial stages of a serious disease. A new study provides evidence for this possibility and highlights the importance of early testing for hidden disease.

Early Signs of Cancer in the Blood

The study was conducted by researchers at Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. Published in the journal PLOS ONE in June 2017, this study focused on how cytokines, proteins found in the blood, interacted with immune cells in people who subsequently developed glioma, a deadly form of brain tumor. Researchers analyzed 974 blood samples from the Janus Serum Bank Cohort in Oslo, Norway. Of the people who gave the samples, half received a diagnosis of brain tumor within the 5 years following their blood being drawn.

The results of the study showed weaker interaction between cytokines and immune cells in the samples from the people who developed cancer than in the samples of the people who did not develop cancer. Researchers also pinpointed several cytokines that appeared to play a significant role in the development of glioma. The researchers speculated that this type of activity could also occur in other types of tumors. They concluded that this discovery could lead to new methods for detecting and treating cancer much earlier in the disease process.

Early Testing to Detect Hidden Disease

This study highlights the importance of regular health checks to detect changes in a person’s health status. Glioma is a type of tumor that is typically diagnosed three months after symptoms appear. This research, however, detected changes in blood protein interactions up to 5 years before the development of the disease. If regular testing methods can be developed to detect these changes in the blood, people will be able to receive treatment for possible glioma years before a tumor develops.

Testing everybody for protein interactions in the blood would probably be expensive and unnecessary. However, based on the results of this and other studies, criteria for risk groups could be developed and people at risk for developing glioma could be tested regularly for signs of the disease. This type of research could also lead to the early detection of other diseases and early testing for other risk groups. For diseases that are usually fatal, early testing would be worth the extra cost. Since many people at risk for disease already have regular blood work, adding another test to the blood draw would not increase the cost by that much.

Testing for Potential Disease at Home

This study and the potential for early detection of disease highlights the importance of regular health and wellness tracking. People can start by monitoring health at home. While testing for proteins in the blood is something only a medical lab can do, people can test other factors, such as blood pressure and heart rate variance, at home every day. Keeping a running record of these factors can help doctors detect changes in the patterns of blood pressure, heart rate, and other factors that could be early signs of hidden disease. Online health measurement apps can store these records and allow for easy transmission to a doctor when they are needed.

HomeLab by Quantihealth is a personal health tracking system, including home testing equipment and online tracking of results. HomeLab can be used to track blood pressure, heart rate and variance in heart rate, as well as several other key health factors. For more information, visit www.thequantihealth.com.

 

Tags: Health Tracking, Early Detection, hidden disease, health status, Online health measurement