Who can say what he will die of? Cancer, cardiovascular disease, accident? Those who want to know can count on science to give them some clues. A team of Estonian researchers has been working since 2000 on the possibility of reading the future or rather the date of our death. What interest ? Beyond the moral questions that this poses (can we live knowing when we are going to die), scientists say to themselves that this assessment could help correct certain bad habits (tobacco, sedentary lifestyle, alcohol, diet, etc.) and which perhaps knows how to grab a few years of life expectancy.
Driven by this idea, Estonians wanted to know whether biological markers in the blood could determine the increased risk of developing a disease and dying from it in the short term. 9,842 adults of all ages had blood drawn. Five years later, the researchers verified whether the presence of biological markers identified five years earlier could explain the death of some.
Four biomarkers
Of the 160 biomarkers, four were found to be determinative of the risk of death. These are albumin, citrate (a glycoprotein) and low density lipoproteins (transport cholesterol to cells). 20% of the patients who presented these 4 markers died five years later.
These results were published in the medical journal Plos Medicine. Further studies are needed to confirm these conclusions. Note that Estonians are not the first to imagine a “death screening” test. Physicists from Lancaster University (Great Britain) communicated last August about their invention, a wristwatch that analyzes blood cells through the skin.