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An unprecedented window into how diseases take hold years before symptoms appear

(www.bloomberg.com)
202 points helsinkiandrew | 2 comments | 18 Jul 25 08:55 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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chithanh ◴[22 Jul 25 06:46 UTC] No.44643879[source]▶
> What UK Biobank is revealing, scan by scan and layer by layer, is that disease doesn’t arrive out of nowhere. It accumulates quietly, shaped by genes, environment, and habits.

I think that is already known for a while. It's called functional reserve, and was a big topic in HIV patients (and then again for SARS-CoV-2).

Like people with higher cognitive capabilities will be protected by those a bit longer before onset of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (or even dementia).

Same for kidneys: They have a functional reserve that you are born with gets used up during life, until it is gone. Acute kidney disease treatment is aimed at preserving whatever little function is left.

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tsoukase ◴[22 Jul 25 07:00 UTC] No.44643980[source]▶
Functional reserve means you are completely well but the start of the disease is coming closer as the former is depleting.

Another case is when disease starts subtly and slowly _with_ initial symptoms that are otherwise not debilitating. Eg Alzheimer's starting decades ago by being forgetful.

I have no idea which one the post is reffering to.

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1. findthewords ◴[22 Jul 25 10:04 UTC] No.44645070[source]▶
Thankfully biology has redundancy, so a single cosmic bit flip does not send humans into a BSOD.
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2. tsoukase ◴[22 Jul 25 10:26 UTC] No.44645215[source]▶
In biomed sciences we rarely refer to the huge amount of resiliency of living organisms. They are so robust, stable and self healing that it would need a fleet of human made machines to cover the basic difficulties.