A blood test looking for your DNA is proving increasingly useful, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Some cancer tests and prenatal assessments already use DNA found circulating in someone’s blood to look for certain cancers or assure the health of a fetus. Now Peter Abadir, a geriatrics expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues are using such an assessment for Alzheimer’s disease and frailty.

Abadir: You take the blood and you look for genetic materials, DNA material that's floating in that blood. That's called circulating cell free DNA fragments. You have two sources of DNA in each cell, mitochondrial DNA and then the genomic DNA coming from the nucleus. When the cell dies you release the genomic DNA and the mitochondrial DNA to the circulation of the individual.   :26

Abadir says both types of DNA are revelatory when it comes to assessing a person’s risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease or becoming more frail, often associated with mortality. He says both are proxies for increased cell death, which releases the DNA into the circulation. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.