Medicine as a continuum – monitoring immune-age and disease progression

Individuals` show high inter-individual phenotypic and molecular variation, especially with age and disease conditions. This variation is often assumed to be due to genetic differences or disease subgroups, whereas longitudinal monitoring of individuals suggests that much of the observed molecular variation can be ascribed to lack of proper consideration of temporal changes in individual’s state.

We studied the longitudinal dynamics of immune system alterations in older adults as well as longitudinal dynamics of disease progression in acute and chronic conditions. Analyses of such dataset with algorithms that explicitly take into account the dynamics of molecular state changes allows to identify ‘progression scores’, different from chronological age or disease onset which shows clear functional implications, effect treatment molecular responses and have prognostic clinical value.

Our findings shed light on the long-term dynamics of immune state variation and disease progression and provide a quantitative framework to bring time into the equation for precision medicine.