Common Blood Tests Can Help Predict Disease Risk :

By the time you finish reading today's Health Train Express you will be able to add one more metric to decreasing the liklihood of chronic disease.

It is not a guarrantee, nor an absolute predictor of your fate...all of these tests are readily available at you doctor's office.  Ask that they be done, when your physician asks you why....quote the following. Almost all plans now reimburse for preventive medicine.  If they deny you, appeal it to the health plan.  The squeaky wheel gets the ' oil '.

The research was presented Friday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology and hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

"Our goal was to create a clinical tool that's useful, easily obtainable and doesn't slow the work-flow of our clinicians," said Heidi May, PhD, MSPH, principal investigator of the the study and a cardiovascular epidemiologist with the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute.

Dr. May and her team studied a primary care population consisting of both male and female patients who had no history of a chronic disease. ICHRON was developed among one set of primary care patients, then tested in a second, independent primary care population.

 The tests, done in Utah are not controlled and are biased heavily to the demographics of Utah, where the study was performed. ICHRON Score ( Intermountain Chronic Disease Score) is factored on several well known and routinely done lab tests.  Many of these are done annually, and are relatively inexpensive.

"It's a fascinating concept," says Wayne Dysinger, a preventive and family medicine physician and CEO of Lifestyle Medicine Solutions, a primary care practice in southern California, who wasn't involved in the study. "They may be on to something, but it's too early to say for sure." For one thing, the score would have to be shown to be accurate in a more general population outside Utah, which is largely white and has lower rates of smoking and obesity than other states.

Among women, those with a high ICHRON score were 11 times more likely to be diagnosed with a chronic disease than those with a low score. Women with a moderate score were three times more likely to be diagnosed. Men with a high score were 14 times more likely to be diagnosed than those with a low score, and those with a moderate score more than five times more likely to be diagnosed.

American Heart Association

Common Blood Tests Can Help Predict Disease Risk : Shots - Health News : NPR