Russian researchers have proposed a method that can predict how a specific medication or even a dietary supplement will affect human immune cells. The fact is that sometimes drugs taken for one illness can unexpectedly influence the course of another. The new AI-based approach should improve the accuracy of early diagnosis and help doctors select treatments more precisely. The method was developed by specialists from Central University.
Currently, inflammatory diseases are usually identified by symptoms, analyses, and tissue studies. However, such methods do not always allow for an early understanding of how medications for other diseases will affect the patient and whether they will cause complications.
To solve this problem, Russian scientists created a platform that works with patient macrophages. Macrophages are innate immune cells: they participate in fighting infections and tumors, and also help coordinate the work of the entire immune system.
To track their reaction, researchers developed a set of fluorescent labels. These labels attach to macrophages and allow observation of how cell behavior changes under the influence of different substances.
The team of scientists studied macrophages from the lung tissues of 100 patients with asthma, pneumonia, and bronchitis. Then, the researchers tested how these cells interact with various drugs, including antibiotics and anti-inflammatory agents. The obtained data were used to train an artificial intelligence system, which predicts with very high accuracy how the intake of specific agents can affect the development of the disease and its treatment.
The results of the study once again showed how complex the human body is. According to scientists, even seemingly harmless dietary supplements, which can be beneficial in reasonable dosages, can sometimes act unpredictably and not always positively in inflammatory diseases.
The invention can improve treatment effectiveness for more than two million people annually in Russia. Primarily, these are patients in pulmonology departments with inflammatory lung diseases, as well as people with autoimmune diseases, the researchers said.