Biomarker signatures of progressing multimorbidity: in pursuit of personalized approaches to clinically complex older individuals

Our vision is to identify a set of blood biomarkers that complement and personalize the clinical workup for a better risk stratification of older persons suffering from multimorbidity –the presence of multiple co-occurring diseases– with the ultimate goals to improve their care and management and to gain further medical knowledge into this complex condition.

Multimorbidity is an important source of clinical complexity that challenges healthcare systems sustainability.

Multimorbid individuals are at higher risk of frailty and dementia, especially when specific disease patterns are at play and develop faster. Yet, no prognostic tools based on biomarkers support clinical decisions of physicians treating multimorbid individuals.

More specifically, we aim to 1) identify the biological correlates of specific disease combinations and their accrual over time, and 2) investigate the biomarker signature of multimorbid individuals developing frailty and dementia.

This project will be pursued by a multidisciplinary team expert in geriatric medicine, neurology, epidemiology, biotechnology, bioinformatics and public health, who will take advantage of readily available data from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen, a cohort study including 3363 well characterized older adults who have been followed up for 18-years and that will undergo a deep proteomic characterization in two time points.

Several applicants’ research lines will converge in this project.