Blood test could prevent heart attacks three years earlier

• April 19, 2024

A new biomarker that is detected by the analysis of blood plasma could be useful to predict the appearance of future ischemic events, such as acute myocardial infarctions, up to three years before they happen.

This is the result of a study carried out by the research group of Professor Lina Badimon and Dr. Teresa Padró, at the Catalan Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, which was presented at the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology, which takes place on the premises of Gran Via of Fira de Barcelona.

Padró said that one of the main problems in medicine is that it is very difficult to predict when a patient is going to have an acute ischemic event since the current markers are "not very sensitive".

Circulating microvesicles are like "small particles" that derive from cells and that move through the blood, and can come from both activated cells and cells that are entering the process of necrosis or cell death.

Padró affirmed that all the cells of the organism release these microvesicles in low quantities, but that their number is increasing in "the presence of pathological situations, such as atherothrombotic disorders or familial hypercholesterolemia", and has underlined that it is possible to identify the origin of the microvesicles depending on their molecular components.

The researchers worked with data from the Safeheart cohort of familial hypercholesterolemia and analyzed the microvesicles of 143 patients with a genetic diagnosis that causes prolonged exposure to high concentrations of LDL cholesterol and therefore a high cardiovascular risk.

A total of 95 participants developed an atherothrombotic event within three years of study follow-up.

Padró said that these patients were controlled and when they compared the levels of LDL between those who suffered and not a cardiovascular event these three years it could be proven that there was no "significant difference".

According to her, this biomarker allows identifying those patients who are at risk of suffering a cardiovascular event when other clinical parameters do not allow them to be identified.

He said that those individuals who at the time of starting the study had higher levels of microvesicles, especially from platelets and leukocyte cells, are those who presented a clinical event in the period of three years.

Video Medicine: Diagnostic Testing for Heart Disease (Q&A) (April 2024).