Using personalized rather than standard reference points for the routine blood test known as a complete blood count (CBC) could improve assessments of patient health and diagnosis of diseases in earlier stages while patients still appear healthy, according to a study led by Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Findings are published Dec. 11 in Nature.
CBC screening is valuable for assessing a patient’s overall health using a single blood sample. Currently, the results of CBC tests are analyzed using a one-size-fits-all reference. The new analysis suggests that this approach can overlook natural variations and deviations in health.
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