Patterns in Individual Blood Count Trajectories in the UK Biobank Characterise Disease-Specific Signatures and Anticipate Pan-Cancer Risk

TL;DR

This study shows that analyzing longitudinal blood count data with machine learning can identify disease-specific signatures and predict disease risk before symptoms appear, enhancing early detection and personalized healthcare.

Contribution

The paper introduces a method to use machine learning on routine blood test data to detect disease signatures and predict disease risk prior to symptom onset.

Findings

Blood count patterns are disease sensitive and specific.

CBC markers provide most of the predictive signal.

Longitudinal analysis improves early disease detection.

Abstract

We investigate the longitudinal behaviour of blood markers from common haematological tests as a marker of disease and as a function of disease progression in a variety of conditions including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and infections. We study confounding and non-confounding factors to allow for the earlier detection of disease and conditions based on their longitudinal signatures from biomarker patterns commonly measured in popular and scalable common blood tests across routine clinical tests, in particular the Complete Blood Count (CBC or FBC). Our analysis with normalised temporal profiles and machine learning techniques even before any symptoms appear demonstrates that analyte-group patterns found in blood testing are disease sensitive and disease specific. We demonstrate that CBC markers contribute to the majority of the predictive signal, while biochemistry and other blood panels provide only a modest additional gain mostly associated to very the individual disease for which the test was designed (e.g. CRP, liver enzymes, blood sugar). Our results demonstrate how regular monitoring, computational intelligence, and machine learning applied to longitudinal CBC data can converge to uncover disease patterns, advancing the potential for precision healthcare and predictive medicine on a mass scale leveraging an existing and pervasive blood test.