Scientists are developing a test which could one day be used to predict how a patient’s illness will progress, and even how well they will respond to treatment.
The international team, led by researchers at Imperial College London, has already tested their method (called VeloCD) to successfully predict patients’ outcomes for a range of health conditions, including the likely progression of infectious and chronic disease.
In a proof-of-concept study they were able confidently predict whether children with acute fever were likely to recover or deteriorate, and whether healthy adults were likely to go on to develop flu or COVID-19 after exposure to the viruses.
The method, based on state-of-the-art bioinformatics techniques, was even able to predict how well patients with inflammatory bowel disease would respond to a course of therapy, just from analysing blood samples after their first dose of treatment.
By measuring key markers in the blood – which reveal the levels of gene expression in response to an illness – it can be used to predict the likely trajectory of disease.
According to the Imperial team, the findings demonstrate how VeloCD can be used to make clinically meaningful predictions of future clinical states. Their findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, lay the vital groundwork for a future prognostic test.
They have filed a patent for the method and believe it has the potential to be developed into a commercially available test for use in hospitals.
Ultimately, the hope is that the approach could be used to rapidly triage patients, helping clinical staff to identify who will need further care and who could be safely sent home with treatment.
