Researchers at the LKS Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) have developed an artificial intelligence tool that may help predict serious cardiovascular problems many years before symptoms appear.
The system, known as CardiOmicScore, uses information from a single blood test to estimate a person's future risk of six major cardiovascular diseases (CVDs): coronary artery disease, stroke, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, peripheral artery disease and venous thromboembolism. In people at elevated risk, the model was able to detect warning signals as far as 15 years before clinical onset.
The findings were published in Nature Communications.
A Blood Test That Captures Current Health
Cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for approximately 19.8 million fatalities in 2022 alone.
Doctors commonly assess cardiovascular risk by examining factors such as age, blood pressure, smoking history and other standard clinical measurements. These indicators are useful, but they may not reveal the earliest biological changes taking place inside the body before a disease becomes apparent.
As a result, some people may not be identified as high risk until the best opportunity for prevention has already begun to narrow.
Genetic risk tests offer another way to estimate a person's likelihood of developing disease. Polygenic risk scores, for example, combine the effects of many genetic variants into a single measure of inherited risk. However, a person's genetic makeup is largely fixed at birth.
That means genetic scores cannot fully reflect more immediate changes caused by diet, exercise, aging, illness, environmental exposures or other influences on health.
CardiOmicScore was designed to provide a more current picture of what is happening inside the body.
AI Combines Thousands of Biological Signals
To build the tool, the HKUMed team used deep learning to combine several layers of biological information. This approach is known as multiomics because it brings together data from different areas of biology, including genomics, metabolomics and proteomics.
Genomics examines genetic information. Proteomics focuses on proteins, which carry out many essential functions in the body. Metabolomics studies small molecules called metabolites, which are produced as the body processes food, generates energy and responds to disease.