A study led by researchers at Scotland’s Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities showed that by identifying changes in blood cell production, a simple blood test could predict older people’s risk of developing leukemia. This allows Those at highest risk of disease can be identified years in advanceshould be treated preventively.
The study’s lead author, Linus Schumacher, explains that to understand leukemia risk, one must “consider the balance between the different cells involved in the production of blood cells and how this balance changes as we age.”
Leukemia is nothing more than an imbalance in the production of these cells, causing the altered cells to grow faster than others, sometimes exceeding them. “fitness advantage”.
How did scientists understand the risk of developing leukemia?
To understand the risk of developing leukemia as they age, the researchers measured blood samples from 83 people from the 1921 and 1936 Lothian Birth Cohorts. Collected every 3 years over a 12-year period, this data was analyzed by mathematicians, biologists, and genomics. .
Next, experts combined this genomic data with a machine learning algorithm. The idea was to associate the different mutations with the different growth rates of the blood stem cells responsible for these changes.
The result was that specific mutations confer different fitness advantages to stem cells in people without leukemia. This difference can be used to predict how fast mutant cells will grow, that is, leukemia risk.
ARTICLE – Nature Medicine – DOI: 10.1038/s41591-022-01883-3.
Source: Tec Mundo
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