How a test can measure your state of health and identify diseases early on

When you feel under the weather, you rush to your doctor, so he can take some blood tests to check for certain diseases — one condition at a time. But the blood tests don't necessarily have to be as specific as that.

Instead of testing a person only when they are sick, researchers have developed a test that people could start using when they are healthy.

As it turns out, your immune system has an antibody profile that can reveal your state of health, for better or worse.

The idea is to arm people with a test, so they could use it to frequently monitor their immune activity. Any changes in the measurement could signal that something has gone wrong.

Arizona State University researchers found that when a person is infected with a pathogen or exposed to a vaccine, their immune system changes in a predictable way.

Using this new technique called immunosignaturing, the diagnostic test would identify diseases before the obvious symptoms begin or be used to measure the effectiveness of vaccinations.

In a way, it creates more of a "universal platform, capable of detecting subtle transformations over the entire antibody profile, regardless of the underlying cause." In the age of personalized medicine, it makes sense to measure your health based on your own antibody response — instead of comparing your response to others or the so-called "normal" range.

According to Dr. Bart Legutki of ASU's Biodesign Institute:

The immune system is exquisitely sensitive to any alterations in an individual's state of health resulting from infection or disease, registering these changes through subtle fluctuations in antibody activity. "The body has already done the hard work of figuring out what is going on inside us," he says, adding, "We just need to interpret the message."

The researchers published their findings in Vaccine, stating there was a unique immunosignature pattern that was present after humans and mice were given the flu vaccine. Indeed, there was a shift in the antibody portrait after the mice and humans were exposed to some virus or other element that could have messed with their immune system.

So far, the researchers have evaluated their test on 20 diseases — and each one painted a distinct picture. At the moment, it works well on infectious diseases. But in the future, the test will be able to detect a wide range of conditions including cancer and Alzheimer's.

Working in collaboration with Legutki, Dr. Stephen Albert Johnston explains the new era of personalized diagnostics and says in the video that it is easy to measure antibodies. When something changes in the antibodies, it hints that something has gone wrong — setting off alarm bells that a disease is present.

According to Johnston, you'd take a drop of blood (or saliva) and send it in on filter paper — so the peptide activity can be read and unique signatures can be used to judge an individual's health status. This seems much more efficient than the regular current blood work for antibodies, which require a full vial of blood.

Photo: The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com