The Voloridge Health Biomarker Reference Guide

A guide for patients and clinicians to understand health through biomarkers

You can download a PDF version of this guide here

Introduction

Blood test results can be overwhelming. You’re often presented with too much information, yet not enough at the same time. This guide is intended as a resource to aid the interpretation of lab test data by individuals and their care providers. It contains ranges of values for each biomarker and different age-related diseases that can be useful when reviewing your personal results.

The seven common age-related disease-related outcomes explored in this guide are All-Cause Mortality, Major Adverse Cardiac Events (MACE), Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), Dementia, Acute Kidney Disease, Liver Disease, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). These outcomes were chosen based on their prevalence and individual impacts on aging and mortality.

Purpose

This report is designed to serve as a reference when reviewing your blood test results. It contains ranges of values for each biomarker and different age-related diseases useful when checking your personal results.

What is a biomarker?

The first step to understanding your bloodwork is recognizing what a blood test is collecting and measuring. A biomarker, or biological marker, is a measurable indicator of a biological process or condition in your body.¹ One of the most common ways to measure certain biomarkers is through blood tests, if the biomarker is present in your blood.

Biomarkers are the key to understanding your health and early detection of diseases. A simple blood test can give you information about your risk for heart disease, liver disease, mortality, and more.² Interpreting your blood test results and understanding what each biomarker can tell you about your health is challenging. In this guide, we present this information in the form of risk ratios and Voloridge^TM Modeled Range values or VMR^TM values.

What is a risk ratio?

A risk ratio is a statistic used to describe your risk for a specific disease relative to other people your age and gender. A risk ratio of one (1) means your risk is exactly average for your age. A risk ratio from zero (0) to one (1) means your risk is lower than the average for your age. This suggests you are doing better than your peers. If your risk ratio is higher than one (1), you have an elevated risk for the disease compared to your peers.

What is a VMR value?

While risk ratios are great for understanding how you compare to others of your age and gender, they can be misleading if the risk for your age group is very high. For example, you may be looking at the average risk for heart disease for people aged 60 to 70. If you are 63 years old and see a risk ratio of 0.73, you might be pleased to know you are at a reduced risk. However, even if your risk ratio is below 1, this does necessarily mean that your risk ratio is healthy or optimal. People in this age group (60+) have a high risk for heart disease in general, so although you are doing better than the average person your age, there is still room to improve.

Reference ranges provided alongside blood test results can be convenient to use, yet like risk ratios, may not necessarily indicate what is considered optimal. To help address this challenge, we also provide a set of values called the Voloridge Modeled Range or VMR. The VMR is a set of values that our models associate with the lowest probabilities of adverse outcomes for a given biomarker. Because they are modeled and calculated directly by Voloridge Health’s predictive models based on a specific data set and are not designed to be recommendations, these values may differ from what you see as reference ranges on a blood test or online.

Predictive Strength

Another metric used by Voloridge Health when looking at biomarkers as predictors for health is the predictive strength value. This metric is used to show how correlated the biomarker is with a certain disease. In the VMR Values by Disease section, the biomarkers are colored with a gradient like in the graphic below. White represents a lower strength value, while green represents a higher strength score.

Additionally, you can find all biomarkers and strength values in the Strength Values section.

Please note that findings from Voloridge Health’s analysis of UK Biobank data should be interpreted with caution due to the dataset’s demographic limitations and potential biases. You can read more in depth about how VMR values and strength values are calculated, as well as population biases and filters, in the Methods section.

What makes Voloridge Health different?

Most traditional models focus on an individual predictor and its relationship to a single outcome, like cholesterol and heart disease. Furthermore, ranges typical in medical literature are based on clinical recommendations and/or population averages instead of connecting the biomarker with longer term health outcome probabilities. In contrast, we examine many health predictors across multiple potential disease outcomes together. Our VMR values are based on real data associations between biomarker ranges and 15-year disease outcomes. By treating each predictor equally, we give a fully data-driven, long-term view of health risks. This guide is designed to be a tool to help you see patterns that single-variable studies might miss, supporting a proactive and holistic approach to healthcare.

A Note on Disease Definitions

Some diseases are defined by comparing specific biomarker levels to established thresholds. For example, type 2 diabetes is typically diagnosed if Hemoglobin A1C levels are at or above 6.5 percent.³ In this case, a risk ratio is no longer meaningful, given that the likelihood someone is diagnosed with such a disease is nearly 100 percent if their biomarker value passes that threshold. However, for the purpose of this guide, values are provided for such biomarkers regardless of these definitions, to maintain consistency and show data trends.