Is it possible to predict heart attack through a blood test? Possibly yes. Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a way to identify individuals who are on the brink of a heart attack and this might soon spell the difference between life and death among certain individuals.
The researchers have developed the procedure called the High-Definition Circulating Endothelial Cell (HD-CEC) assay to detect and characterize CECs in the blood samples of 79 patients who had experienced a heart attack at the time of the sampling. The cells were shown to be significantly high in the heart attack patients compared to the healthy controls and were detected with high sensitivity and high specificity.
The technique, which is described in the report published on the journal Physical Biology, works by identifying the circulating endothelial cells which line the walls of the arteries. It has been successful in identifying patients undergoing treatment for a recent heart attack with a healthy control group.
To date, no test is yet available to predict a heart attack with satisfying accuracy and this has proved fatal for some individuals. The researchers, however, believe that their technique could now be tested on individuals who show symptoms of, but are yet to, experience heart attack.
"The goal of this paper was to establish evidence that these circulating endothelial cells can be detected reliably in patients following a heart attack and do not exist in healthy controls-which we have achieved," said TSRI Associate Professor Peter Kuhn, who led the study. "Our results were so significant relative to the healthy controls that the obvious next step is to assess the usefulness of the test in identifying patients during the early stages of a heart attack."
Earlier work using this technique showed that it could predict heart attacks two or three weeks in advance and that it would cost only £65, or just over $100 per person but it has since been improved by its researchers, who hope that the test would be readily available in clinics in just two years. The test, which is described by its creators as the "holy grail of heart medicine", could now predict heart attack risks in a matter of hours.
