Study hints at potential for health conditions to be diagnosed earlier

clinician and patient - Conditions such as coeliac disease and Parkinson's disease could be detected in principle up to 10 years earlier than they are currently, suggests a new study by UCL researchers. The study, published in the British Journal of General Practice , reviewed existing evidence on how people's use of healthcare changed in the weeks, months and years ahead of the diagnosis of a range of conditions. This detectable change in healthcare use indicates the condition's "diagnostic window" - that is, the point at which diagnosis in some patients may theoretically be possible. While the concept of diagnostic windows has been developed in cancer research, this study comprehensively examines whether it is relevant for other diseases for the first time. The review, led by PhD candidate Emma Whitfield (UCL Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care and UCL Institute of Health Informatics), looked at 27 studies containing evidence of how healthcare use changed among people who went on to be diagnosed with a condition. It found that, for chronic conditions such as Parkinson's disease, coeliac disease, schizophrenia, and inflammatory bowel disease (including ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease), healthcare use increased years before diagnosis, suggesting significantly earlier diagnosis might be possible for some patients. For relatively acute onset conditions such as tuberculosis and herpes simplex encephalitis (infection caused by the herpes simplex virus), the change in healthcare use occurred only shortly before diagnosis - between 1 and 6 months.