7.20.09 | Chris Seper

Wellness predictor Allostatix hopes to be military’s PTSD detector

CINCINNATI, Ohio — The wellness company Allostatix has struggled to find a foothold selling Corporate America on the idea that its blood test can act as an early warning system for employee health problems.

Now, it’s hoping to make a deal with the military to show that the same test can predict which soldiers will struggle most with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Allostatix has been working with the Department of Defense to get the go-ahead to try to predict PTSD, which would begin with a study of active-duty soldiers and units of the Kentucky Army National Guard. The company recently raised $200,000, in part to be ready if the military approves the project, according to company executives and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It’s also in the midst of a second round of financing.

“That’s the challenge with PTSD: it doesn’t immediately manifest itself in physical symptoms,” Allostatix President Gordon Horwitz said.

The 4-year-old company, located just off the Xavier University campus in Cincinnati, is built around a blood test that measures allostatic load: the concept that the body’s stress response can accelerate disease and affect organs, including the heart. Allostatix’s test measures the damage and predicts (as far as five years out with 85 percent accuracy, according to the company) where a person’s health is heading.

Individuals see their health status along a spectrum of green (good), yellow (warning) and red (danger).

Anyone nationwide can take Allostatix’s test right now — for $350. The company has an agreement with LabCorp to administer the test and e-mail results to Allostatix, which then sends you test results and recommendations. Horwitz said the test price often drops to $90 after it’s offset by preventive medicine benefits in insurance policies.

The test was launched late last year. Allostatix wanted to offer it to companies, which could use the collective test results of its workforce to customize fitness offerings, hopefully heading-off costly illnesses and insurance payments for medical treatments. But Horwitz said the economy sunk just as his company was preparing for deals and has since been told by potential customers to “come back in 2010.”

That’s a little surprising, considering wellness products continue to have quite a following. About four months ago, for example, insurance company Red Brick Health landed $15 million to expand its wellness services. Plus, health-care systems continue to build their wellness programs for patients and employees alike.

But Horwitz points out his company’s look at “future health” instead of present health breaks from the traditional model of health-risk assessments, which measure the risk of certain behaviors like smoking. “Many large providers have invested heavily in the health risk assessment model, and (that) will not be easy to change, even though our test is the ultimate ‘heath risk assessment,’ ” he said.

Horwitz said the military study is one of a couple opportunities for his company this year. Allostatix hopes to test 10,000 members of the military and about 5,000 spouses, and follow them for about two years, said Dr. Robert Ludke, a partner in Allostatix and a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Health at the University of Cincinnati. Participants would be tested before and after deployment.

Horwitz said if there is a connection between PTSD and allostatic load, the tests could help contribute to battle-readiness reports and provide help earlier to soldiers more likely to have problems. Ludke said the test eventually could expand to help predict other mental health problems.

Allostatix also hopes to build interest in its individual testing through LabCorp. The company is negotiating for a presence on a new health care talk show that sounded a lot like what is planned for Oprah-friendly Dr. Mehmet Oz. But Horwitz would not say with whom he was negotiating.

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user Army.mil]

Chris Seper MedCity News

Chris Seper is the CEO and editor in chief at MedCity Media, which publishes MedCityNews.com. Reach him at chris@medcitynews.com.

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Tags: Cincinnati, Ohio, wellness

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Looks like the Allostatix Load test could enhance the efficiency of the US Military, save on future medical costs and protect the lives of our soldiers, veterans and their families. I hope they get the go ahead from the DOD. I am also glad to know that I can have the test done myself.

Comment by Jane Young — July 21, 2009 @ 1:32 pm

Sounds like the mood rings we had in the 70′s.

Comment by Elizabeth C Henderson MD — July 22, 2009 @ 2:07 pm

I don’t think mood rings have this kind of scientific research credibility behind it…Catch up on your reading a bit and check out the article below published in Society of Biological Psychiatry:

Mood Disorders and Allostatic Load

By: Bruce S. McEwen

The brain controls both the physiologic and the behavioral
coping responses to daily events as well as major stressors,
and the nervous system is itself a target of the mediators of
those responses through circulating hormones. The amygdala
and hippocampus interpret what is stressful and regulate
appropriate responses. The amygdala becomes hyperactive
in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive
illness, and hypertrophy of amygdala nerve cells is reported
after repeated stress in an animal model. The hippocampus
expresses adrenal steroid receptors. It undergoes atrophy in
several psychiatric disorders and responds to repeated stressors
with decreased dendritic branching and reduction in
number of neurons in the dentate gyrus. Stress promotes
adaptation (â€œallostasisâ€), but a perturbed diurnal rhythm or
failed shutoff of mediators after stress (â€œallostatic stateâ€)
leads, over time, to wear and tear on the body (â€œallostatic
loadâ€). Neural changes mirror the pattern seen in the
cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune systems, that is,
short-term adaptation versus long-term damage. Allostatic
load leads to impaired immunity, atherosclerosis, obesity,
bone demineralization, and atrophy of nerve cells in brain.
Allostatic load is seen in major depressive illness and may
also be expressed in other chronic anxiety disorders such as
PTSD and should be documented. Biol Psychiatry 2003;54:
200â€“207 Â© 2003 Society of Biological Psychiatry

Comment by Melinda Price — July 23, 2009 @ 3:20 pm

[...] Blood Test to Predict PTSD?Â - Allostatix is hoping to make a deal with the military to show that a simple blood test can predict which soldiers will struggle most with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). [...]

Comment by PTSD in the News: Weekly Roundup | PTSD in the News | Heal My PTSD, LLC — July 27, 2009 @ 3:13 pm

[...] year’s pharmacy chain of the year by the trade magazine Drug Topics. Midwest companies like Allostatix (wellness blood test); Engagement Health (corporate wellness) and Red Brick Health (corporate [...]

Comment by A $200 vibrator. A Jew in the Catholic Church. And why wellness’ greatest profits are yet to come : MedCity News — September 1, 2009 @ 1:29 pm

Now is the time for all to take a step back and revisit the way we are delivering healthcare to all, not just our veterans. In the United States there is nearly 250,000 deaths annually contributed to â€œiatrogenicâ€ causes. Iatrogenic is defined as â€œinduced in a patient by a physicianâ€™s activity, manner, or therapy. It is commonly used to pertain to a complication of treatment.â€ I fully support Allostatix, LLC because I believe that the homeostasis model used to treat patients is not working particularly well. Preventative medicine and patient education should be the direction we should be on. We need to be educating patients and giving ownership of health and wellness back to the patient. By individuals taking this test we are giving them ownership to their future health by providing them with their individual â€œmeasurementsâ€ through blood and other biometric analysis so that they are better informed about their future health and further, suggesting ways to change that health trajectory.
As a research scientist and retired healthcare provider I was offended by the â€œmood-ringâ€ comment above. â€œPredictive physiological regulationâ€ is what allows us to perform at unusually high demands, but for short periods of time. When the demand persists, physiological mechanisms must be reset to operate at the new levels. Our brain is the executive which controls our behaviors and sets all internal parameters to operate at these higher levels. If pathology is developing because some wiring in the brain is no longer connected nor has good contact, as has been identified in PTSD and other anxiety disorders, pathology will certainly develop downstream. So to identify someone with some stressed induced pathology is not enough. To actually predict health trajectory is something else. Using the allostatic load test should be the starting point…letâ€™s be looking for pathology that is probable if we donâ€™t make changes now based on the allostatic load scores.
Wellness is a term that refers to an individualâ€™s state of mind as well as their physical state, balancing between health and physical, mental, emotional and spiritual fitness. The concept of wellness also entails having access to rehabilitation, when indicated. Moreover, wellness should be an interactive process where an individual becomes aware of and practices healthy choices to establish a balanced lifestyle. Allostatix, LLC should be the starting point that all physicians should refer their patients to…this is good preventative medicine!

Comment by Robbie Robbins — February 1, 2010 @ 5:44 pm