As the dizziness began to fade and nausea to subside, I kept thinking how two tablespoons did not sound like a lot of blood. During regular checkups, my physician draws only about half that amount. I suppose I might have guessed, especially after a 12-hour fast, I would sicken when my glucose levels dipped--I'm a terrible blood donor in that regard.

The nurse who drew my blood helpfully looked around my office for a sweet drink. "Do you have any soda or juice?" she asked. But the only thing I had was a can of Diet Coke. Which in a way is ironic: I used to drink regular Coke but switched to the sugar-free form after blood tests revealed that my triglycerides were too high.

Momentary ill feelings, though, were an acceptable physical price for 250 blood tests done at once--I was told that running them separately with conventional means would require a liter of blood. Imagine how dizzy and nauseated I'd feel then. So how could I not roll up my sleeve for Biophysical Corporation? The Austin, Tex.-based company promised to use the blood to screen for presymptomatic cancers, potential immune disorders, latent infections, undetected hormonal imbalances and unrecognized nutritional deficiencies. It seemed to mark a step toward that Star Trek future in which Dr. McCoy waves around a saltshaker device to determine a person's medical secrets. ("Heartbeat is all wrong. Body temperature is ... Jim, this man is a Klingon!")

The Biophysical250 assessment, as the firm calls it, is more than just a battery of tests. It includes a medical-history interview; a personal visit to the home or office for the blood draw (I should have picked my home, where I actually keep sugar); and a follow-up physician consultation. All this attention does not come cheap. It costs $3,400, and it is not covered by health insurance. The company states that doing each test individually would cost 10 times more, so Biophysical250 is a bargain by comparison. Still, you need some disposable income, or you must be so indispensable to your employers that they will pay for it. I don't fall into either category. But because I was reviewing its product, Biophysical agreed to conduct the test on me for free.

The analysis focuses on blood biomarkers, which are chemicals whose presence or amount may indicate abnormal processes or reactions in the body. Among the most familiar are cardiovascular ones: high- and low-density lipoproteins (HDL and LDL, the good and bad cholesterols) and triglycerides.

Checking 250 biomarkers at once might seem like overkill. A routine exam screens for two or three dozen. Looking at one biomarker in isolation, however, is usually not especially informative--for instance, the ratio of LDL to HDL is more important than either alone. The Biophysical250 takes it much further: to assess the risk for heart disease and stroke, the firm analyzes 33 biomarkers.

And examining several biomarkers together improves the odds of finding problems early, especially malignancies. Blood tests for cancers have been problematic, because healthy people may produce the same kinds and amounts of the biomarkers that cancer patients do. Moreover, the chemicals do not always show up in cancer patients, and they may result from unrelated conditions. The Biophysical250 screens for about four dozen blood chemicals tied to cancerous activity in general to increase the odds of detecting presymptomatic disease.

As an example, Biophysical points to ovarian cancer, which is usually diagnosed too late. Cancer antigen 125, the most commonly measured marker for the disease, shows up in only half of patients in stage 1, when treatment is most likely to succeed. The Biophysical250 tries to boost the chance of early detection by measuring other, biologically independent compounds, such as vascular endothelial growth factor, interleukin-6, and monocyte chemoattractant protein. "Just the fact that we stack so many biomarkers really minimizes false positives," comments Mark Chandler, CEO and founder of Biophysical.�

1 Comments

1. 1. samjok 03:13 AM 1/27/08

   there is something fishy about analysing 250 parameters and not being able to decide whether the person does have hemochromatosis. Ferritin can be very elevated without iron overload (lupus, etc,), but transferrin saturation over 50, elevated iron binding, etc, would indicate hemochromatosis with over 90% certainty. Furthermoe, Mr Yam states that after he stopped takin his iron containing supplement his ferritin went down. This canonly happen when ferritin is elevated because of inflammatory disease (empty or apoferritin). The Fe rich ferritin of hemochromatosis can only go down through blood donation (phlebotomy) and only foes down about 20 points with every pint of blood removed. Whether mr Yams ferritin is elevated because of inflammatory disease or hemochromatosis, Biophysical250 should have determined the cause.
   Finally, the probability that mR yam is ok in theother 249 parameters is zero, which indicates that the ranges used are too wide, as is the case in most laboratories.

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