As published in the journal PLoS Medicine , a team of Estonian researchers say they have found the magic formula to know if we are in danger of death in the short or medium term . And it turns out that it is very simple.
Specifically, scientists have analyzed 106 biomarkers (the biochemical signals that warn of an alteration in the body) of almost 10,000 individuals aged 18 to 103 years, apparently in good health, between 2002 and 2011.
The surprise has been great: only four of the substances tracked predicted with great accuracy the probabilities of dying within five years.
The ingredients of this "deadly cocktail" are the following: albumin, the orosomucoid protein, low-density lipoproteins – LDL, which carry cholesterol – and citric acid, basic in the process by which cells obtain energy.
Experts have found that subjects with abnormal amounts of these four biomarkers were no less than 19 times more likely to die than the rest. To make sure, the Estonian research group asked colleagues at the University of Helsinki in Finland to repeat the experiment. And these, after monitoring more than 7,500 people have reached the same conclusion.
Although the test could be a powerful prevention tool in the future, at the moment it would only serve to predict a general danger of death, which would not allow to act against a specific disease.
