When is your time up?
A blood test that tells you how long you are likely to live may help seniors “better plan for the remaining years of life”, Council on the Ageing (COTA) Queensland chief executive officer, Mark Tucker-Evans, said.
The test, which will be on sale in Britain later this year for about $600, allegedly measures key sections of DNA in our cells which can show how quickly the body is ageing.
Experts believe the test can predict whether someone is likely to die prematurely from an illness such as cancer, Alzheimer’s or heart disease.
“Some older people may welcome [the blood test] and others may say ‘what’s the point in spending $600 on a test’ when they could be hit by a bus tomorrow?” Mr Tucker-Evans told DPS Publishing.
He said cultural factors also come into play and whether or not people want to know how many days, months or years they have left.
The test works by measuring sections on the tips of chromosomes called telomeres.
These structures gradually become shorter as we age. But scientists have also found that shorter telomeres are linked to premature ageing as well as a range of potentially lethal illnesses.
By measuring the length of telomeres, experts believe they will be able to tell whether or not a person is at risk of chronic illnesses and whether they are likely to die early.
Although they cannot pinpoint the exact month or even year of death, they should be able to estimate whether or not a person is likely to die at a younger age.
The Spanish inventor of the test, Maria Blasco, who is based at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, said: “We know that people who are born with shorter telomeres also have a shorter lifespan.”
“But we don’t know whether longer telomeres are going to give you a longer lifespan. That’s not really known in humans,” Ms Blasco said.
Do you want to know when your ‘time is up’? Let us know what you think of this latest blood test.
