Researchers are creepily close to predicting when you’re going to die

Enlarge / Samples of donated blood in Vacutainer test tubes. (credit: Getty | Universal Images Group)

If death is in the cards, it may also be in your blood.

Measurements of 14 metabolic substances in blood were pretty good at predicting whether people were likely to die in the next five to 10 years. The data was published this week in Nature Communications.

A team of researchers led by data scientists in the Netherlands came up with the fateful 14 based on data from 44,168 people, aged 18 to 109. The data included death records and measurements of 226 different substances in blood. Of the 44,168 people, 5,512 died during follow-up periods of nearly 17 years.

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