Md. Taqi Yasir
Scientists have launched the world’s largest project to scan the internal workings of the human body, which could enable doctors in the near future to treat diseases before they actually happen.
The brains, hearts, bones, arteries and body fat of some 100,000 volunteers will be scanned to create a massive database as part of the UK Biobank study. It is believed that this “completely new window” on disease will help researchers identify the early warning signs of a range of conditions such as dementia, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, osteoporosis and arthritis. This would mean that doctors possibly in just 10 to 15 years’ time – could scan their patients, spot a disease before the patient has noticed any problem and take action to prevent it. Launched on Thursday, the £43m project has been funded by the Government, the Welcome Trust and the British Heart Foundation.
Professor Paul Matthews, of Imperial College London, who chairs the academics who support UK Biobank, spelled out the dramatic effect they hope the research will have on medicine.
“This imaging is going to help us understand risk factors that could prevent future diseases, just as the discovery of smoking and the link to long cancer has changed the entire prevalence of that disease,” he said.
“We may also find out how to find the earliest changes in disease, discovering markers for disease like Alzheimer’s years before they ever happen, to allow doctors and clinicians to think about treating people before the disease really start to express it.