Researchers led by Imperial College London have developed a computational method called VeloCD that analyses patterns of gene expression in blood to estimate how a patient’s condition may change over time.
In proof-of-concept work, the approach was tested across several datasets, including acute childhood fever, controlled viral exposure and inflammatory bowel disease. The results suggest that changes in blood RNA may contain prognostic information about deterioration, recovery or treatment response.
This is not yet a routine “blood test” available in clinical practice. The current approach relies on whole-blood RNA sequencing and bioinformatics, and further validation is needed before clinicians could use it to make individual treatment decisions.
The important distinction is between showing that a research method can separate outcome patterns in existing datasets and proving that a simplified test improves real-world clinical care. Prospective studies, reproducibility and practical assay development will be necessary before that question can be answered.
Source: Imperial College London.
