03 May 07

A way to test blood samples quickly for a wide range of diseases has been developed by a team led by Oxford researchers. The findings will ultimately allow early identification of disease risk, and reduce the time, cost and discomfort of current tests.

The technology, which requires just a pinprick of blood, has been shown to work in rats, and is now being applied to human blood samples, with the aim of making the tests clinically available in a few years.

Blood samples from 200 rats were analysed to find a link between chemical markers found in blood plasma and potential diseases.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), a process which uses powerful magnets to identify individual molecules, was used to compare blood samples from rats with and without particular diseases. Over 38,000 individual molecules (known as metabolites) were quantified using NMR, including glucose, cholesterol and lipids, as well as metabolites processed by gut bacteria.

The scientists then searched regions of the rat genome to find areas corresponding to each metabolite. Using the results it is possible to match a disease to a particular group of metabolites, known as a biomarker.

Professor Dominique Gauguier, an expert in mammalian genetics at Oxford University's Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics (WTCHG), who led the study, said: 'This NMR process allows us to make important links between DNA and disease. It shows the value of the rat as a model for how diseases come about in humans.'

The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, was led by the WTCHG, with involvement from scientists from Imperial College London and healthcare company Novo Nordisk. The findings were published in Nature Genetics.

The technology is already being applied to human blood samples from patients suffering from coronary artery disease, and Professor Gauguier hopes that biomarkers for a range of human diseases will be identified within a few years.