European researchers say they’ve developed a quick online test that could determine your risk of dying within the next five years.
If you’re between 40 and 70 years old and willing to answer a handful of questions about your health, lifestyle and relationship status, the British and Swedish scientists say your answers are enough to predict your mortality.
But the Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet doctors say the test is about helping patients and their physicians look for red flags so they can be resolved.
Take the UbbLe test here.
“The fact that the score can be measured online in a brief questionnaire, without any need for lab tests or physical examination, is an exciting development. We hope that our score might eventually enable doctors to quickly and easily identify their highest risk patients, although more research will be needed to determine whether it can be used in this way in a clinical setting,” Dr. Andrea Ganna, one of the study’s co-authors, said in a statement.
“Of course, the score has a degree of uncertainty and shouldn’t be seen as a deterministic prediction. For most people, a high risk of dying in the next five years can be reduced by increased physical activity, smoking cessation and a healthy diet,” Ganna said.
READ MORE: Online tool calculates when you’ll die based on 4 unhealthy habits
The questions include:
- How old are you? (You have to be between 40 and 70 to take the test)
- Do you smoke?
- What is your usual walking pace?
- Are you dealing with diabetes, cancer or heart disease?
- Have you dealt with death of a close relative, divorce or financial difficulties in the past two years?
In total, there are 11 questions for women and 13 for men.
READ MORE: Is the treadmill test a good measure of your risk of death?
The test was pulled together with the help of data from the UK Biobank study, which tracked half a million British patients over the course of five years. Hundreds of health factors were considered in the study.
Ganna and her colleagues, including Dr. Erik Ingelsson, zeroed in on a handful of factors that affected volunteers’ death risk using algorithms. The researchers found that a patient’s self-related information on walking pace, to history of illness and injuries, is a stronger predictor of death than measurements, such as blood pressure and pulse rate, for example.
READ MORE: Not too late for seniors to take up exercise for better health, longer life, study says
Once their quiz was put together, it was tested on nearly 36,000 people in two Scottish centres. It was 80 per cent accurate in determining death risk.
The team’s full findings were published Wednesday in the British journal, The Lancet. Read the full findings here.
Take the UbbLe test here.
In 2014, Canadian researchers put together an online tool that would calculate when patients would die based on four unhealthy habits – smoking, lack of exercise, unhealthy eating and excessive drinking.
READ MORE: How running for just 10 minutes a day could add years to your life
The doctors scoured the health data and Statistics Canada survey responses of nearly 80,000 Ontarians between 2001 and 2005. They were asked about how often they exercised, if they smoke, drank and watched what they ate. The respondents’ hospital use was tracked to see if there was any link to the four health risks – the researchers said it was the first time the habits were assessed as a group.
Try out the online calculator here.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
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