To have insights on one’s state of health, the molecular composition of blood is a reliable parameter, and is comparable to an individual’s fingerprint. In principle, changes in blood composition serves to raise an alert for early signs of disease. However, to use fingerprints for diagnostic purposes, the stability of molecular patterns in healthy individuals over time needs to be established.
Meanwhile, following a research initiative, a team of researchers have now successfully accomplished the task. Employing a method known as Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, the team showcased that the molecular constituent of blood samples obtained from a group of healthy donors remained stable over a period of couple of months. This also confirmed that each of the resulting spectra could be evidently assigned to an individual.
Nonetheless, the rapid diagnosis of human diseases is a longstanding issue in medicine. Since diseases mostly alter the molecular composition of circulating body fluids, thus, a snapshot of the molecular composition would be invaluable to detect a multitude of diseases states. Therefore, in such a state, the types and concentrations of many molecules present in the bloodstream can provide crucial information on the health of an individual. Nonetheless, the real challenge comes when one tries to determine the precise composition of body fluids, in the event the concentration of informative molecules is extremely low.
In fact, using Fourier-transform infrared measurements, the molecular fingerprints of plasma and serum samples from 31 healthy individuals over a clinically relevant period of over 6 months analyzed. Hence, this demonstrates that infrared molecular fingerprint of each individual donor remains stable over a period ranging from few days to few weeks and months.