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A home testing kit that spots early signs of disease anywhere in the body could be available within 10 years, according to a leading scientist.
The simple blood test is being developed to allow people to screen themselves for life-threatening diseases, including a variety of cancers and dementias, before they develop any symptoms.
In many cases, a quick diagnosis significantly improves a patient's chances of recovering from an illness.
The test is expected to be the first major advance to emerge from a new field of biology called "proteomic fingerprinting", which promises tests that can assess the health of each organ in the body one by one.
"In 10 years' time, we envisage having a simple test you could do two to three times a year, which uses a prick of blood to check the health of each organ in the body," said Dr Leroy Hood, who is leading the research at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. However, some experts believe the technology will also introduce new ethical issues for GPs and patients.
It may reveal incurable diseases long before they start causing illness. For GPs using the tests, this raises the difficult question of whether patients should be told, and if so, what counselling they should receive.
The technique relies on the fact that every organ in the body constantly releases hundreds of different proteins into the bloodstream. Around 50 of these are unique to each organ, and make up what scientists call a "protein fingerprint" for the organ. When disease strikes the brain, liver, kidney or another organ, it alters the protein fingerprint.
A version of the test has already been used to diagnose mice infected with BSE, a fatal brain disease thought to be caused by rogue proteins called prions. The test confirmed the disease long before symptoms appeared. As yet, there is no reliable test or cure for BSE in cattle or the human equivalent, vCJD.
Hood said that within six months it would be possible to confirm whether the test was also capable of picking up early-stage infections of BSE in cattle and vCJD in humans.
Hood's team is working on other diseases, including prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and glioblastoma, a type of brain tumour. Eventually, they hope to develop a single test that will spot early signs of disease in 50 different organs and tissues in the body.
At Hammersmith Hospital in London, Dr Dan Agranoff is using proteomic fingerprinting for early diagnosis of TB and life- threatening lung infections that affect patients with weak immune systems, such as leukaemia patients and those who have had bone marrow or organ transplants.
But the possibility of testing for a vast range of diseases might raise ethical issues, Dr Agranoff added. "If you can screen for something at a very early stage, but you have no treatment, you're at risk of causing a lot of anxiety without being able to do anything about it."
