Early Signs Of Heart Attack By A Blood Test 

A research team from Canada has devised a test that could detect early signs of a heart attack from a few drops of blood. The test zeroes in on two blood proteins. The levels of those two blood proteins shoot up during the onset of a heart attack. The new test is quicker and more accurate method for diagnosing whether patients with chest pain are having a heart attack. 

The test could save lives by allowing quicker medical intervention. According to preliminary lab studies, the new test took five minutes and had 99 per cent accuracy rate. The study appeared in the August 1 print issue of the Journal of Proteome Research, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. 

The newly invented test is better than existing blood tests, which last for several hours and are only 50 to 70 per cent accurate upon hospital admission, the researchers say. The new test uses mass spectrometry to detect two proteins in blood that are related to the earliest stages of a heart attack. Sometimes, presence of gallstones and severe indigestion mimic heart attack pain. 

The test will help doctors to exclude those symptoms while diagnosing a heart attack. This will also reduce unnecessary hospital stays for patients whose heart is okay. The test could detect heart attacks even in the absence of classic symptom of chest pain or the classic abnormal electrocardiogram. 

Some heart attack patients come with symptoms like dizziness, shortness of breath, or pain in other parts of the body, such as the neck, jaw or arm, which can mislead doctors. "I think this test will dramatically improve the ability of physicians to rapidly and unambiguously diagnose heart attacks," says John Marshall, chief investigator for the study and a consultant with Syn.X Pharma Inc, which developed the test. "If all goes well in future studies, the test could be available in clinics in three to five years." 

For years, researchers have been trying to develop a better diagnostic kit for the early detection of heart attacks. For this, they heavily relied on blood proteins that include creatine kinase, myoglobin, and most recently, troponin. All of them indicate that a heart attack has crept in and heart cells are in their death throes. 

But, in the current study, Marshall and his colleagues have focused on two proteins that ring the warning bell before the heart cells begin to die. One of the chemicals is a protein called C3F discovered for the first time as a heart attack marker, which causes inflammation in the blood vessels. The other is fibrinogen peptide A, which has role in the clotting process. Together, the two proteins disrupt the blood flow to heart cells causing their death. 

The advantage of the test is that it gives out the ominous signals at a time when the heart cells are gasping for oxygen. It is precisely the moment before the death of heart cells. Like other marker proteins, the mere presence of these two proteins is not a definitive diagnosis of heart attack, but serves as a diagnostic aid to be used in combination with other diagnostic criteria for determining if a heart attack is in progress, researchers say. 

"The test detects heart attack at an earlier stage, which is key to improving patient outcome, as it permits available treatments, such as clot-buster and angioplasty," explains cardiologist Eric Stanton, study co-author and an associate professor of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. "A key to the success of the new diagnostic test will be access to mass spectrometry." Mass spectrometry is also being used in the detection of other diseases, including cancer and diabetes. 


But, full-fledged research settings are needed to run the newly born test. "That may change in near future," predicts Stanton. "The now bulky technology may be reduced to the size of a laptop computer that is capable of evaluating a patient's complete disease profile based on a single drop of blood - all in a fraction of the time it would take to get conventional test results."