Simple blood test £ 5 could help prevent thousands of heart attacks, according to study | Medical research

Thousands of heart attacks and lines could be prevented with the help of a simple blood test of 5 pounds, according to the investigations.

By checking the troponin values ​​in patients, doctors could make it possible to predict their risk of cardiovascular events with a much greater accuracy, according to a study financed by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which was published in the journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The protein occurs in heart muscle cells and seeps into the blood when the hearts are damaged. Troponin blood examinations are already used in hospitals to diagnose heart attacks after they have occurred.

Studies indicate that the inexpensive tests could also be used to recognize “silence” damage to the heart and predict the future risk of a patient for cardiovascular events.

The tests that can be carried out in addition to routine cholesterol in GP operations can enable preventive treatment such as statins to avoid thousands of heart attacks and lines.

The main author of the study, Anoop Shah, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “Troponin, even in the normal area, is a strong indicator of damage in the quiet heart muscles.

“As such, the test offers an additional information level with which we can increase our accuracy if we predict the risk of people. We want to identify as many people with high risk as possible so that nobody misses the opportunity to get preventive treatment.”

Adding troponin tests to existing guidelines for the cardiacity estimate could help recognize patients with high risk who would benefit from preventive treatment, said Shah, which would reduce their risk for future circulatory problems.

The study showed that people with higher troponine in the blood had a higher risk of having a heart attack or a stroke within 10 years. The modeling indicates that the tests for the currently identified reviews for cardiovascular health for people would prevent a heart attack or a stroke for all tested persons if they are currently at risk.

The researchers analyzed the health data of more than 62,000 people in Europe and the USA.

Each person had measured their troponin levels and conventional risk factors such as age, blood pressure, prehistory of diabetes, smoking status and cholesterol levels. The participants were then followed for a decade to see if they had a heart attack or a stroke.

Current cardiovascular health ratings use an algorithm to predict the risk of a patient to have a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years due to their risk factors, including the cholesterol infidelos measured using a blood test.

By adding troponin results to these existing risk factors, the predictions of the algorithm up to four times were more precise than adding cholesterol results alone, according to the researchers.

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It is crucial that the modeling suggested that troponin tests were particularly effective to recognize the danger of people who were currently evaluated and were the “medium risk” of cardiovascular problems.

This average risk group can have problems for doctors, said the BHF because it is not classified as a low risk, but their risk is not high enough to justify the preventive treatment.

The study showed that troponin tests were added that up to 8% of the people classified as an intermediate risk were changed to high risk. The offering of preventive treatments such as statins for newly classified patients could prevent thousands of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks or strokes.

Prof. Bryan Williams, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer at the BHF, said: “Developments of the risk forecast have helped to build up effective algorithms that can recognize most of the risk of heart attacks and lines. For around 100,000 hospital admissions in the UK, it is clear that it is still clear that it is still a lot of space for improvements gives.

“This new data indicates that medical specialists could help this blood test to current risk predictions to identify more people who are exposed to a higher risk and provide advice and treatment in order to reduce their risk of future heart attacks and lines.”