A Blood Test to Predict Death?

Could a simple blood test predict a person's risk of dying from heart disease or cancer?

Reporting in an early online publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association and at the European Society of Cardiology Congress, Johan Arnlov and his colleagues say that a certain enzyme that is measured in the blood may be linked to both heart disease and cancer, and therefore could serve as an early predictor of who is mostly likely to die from these diseases.

In the study, which involved nearly 2,000 people enrolled in two separate long-term trials, Arnlov's team measured the levels of cathepsin S, an enzyme involved in breaking up proteins. They then tracked these volunteers for up to 12.5 years, and found that those with the highest levels of cathepsin S were more likely to die than those with lower, or about half those levels.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/08/31/a-blood-test-to-predict-death-it-could-be-possible/#ixzz1WhitDyeF

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