Death is inevitable and is something we would all go through at the end of our lives. But while we know that anyone can die anytime, the sudden death of someone (or an unexpected diagnosis) can send the worlds of our families and friends spinning. After all, death is death, and it’s incredibly hard to lose someone important to us, especially if we believe that it happened way before “their time.” What if there’s a way to help predict it better? What if you can help process and plan it more? As it turns out, there is such a way. And according to researchers, the future can be predicted via a simple process: a blood test, which can envision the risk of illness or imminent death. Predicting Death The research, which studied 108,135 people between the ages of 20 and 100, was made by scientists at the University of Copenhagen. According to them, around 10,372 participants died during the study period. After analyzing the health records of these patients, they were then able to discover abnormal test results. First off, the researchers found that the patients who died had low levels of lymphocyte, which is a certain type of white blood cell. Second, those who had low counts of it also had a higher mortality risk than those who had normal levels. This, according to them, suggests that a low lymphocyte count can lead to an early death. "This might be due to reduced immune surveillance, which makes these patients less able to survive potentially deadly diseases. Lymphopenia could also be a more passive marker of general frailty that confers a high risk of death from any cause," the researchers explained. "Older age is associated both with decreasing lymphocyte count, which we found in this study and with mortality." Known as lympophenia, the condition is often caused by either undernutrition or AIDS, although it can also be inherited or caused by different drugs and autoimmune disorders. It’s often diagnosed through a routine blood test. However, mortality implications have been unknown since now, which is why people who have it usually don’t get sent to further testing. Source
