Cardiovascular diagnostics Imminent heart attacks detectable years in advance?

Revolutionary prediction of heart attacks within reach?

A heart attack is a dangerous disease that often leads to the death of those affected. Scientists have now developed a new method to predict deadly heart attacks years in advance.

Scientists from the internationally recognized Oxford University have developed a method to predict heart attacks years in advance in their current research. The physicians published the results of their study in the English-language journal "The Lancet".

Many people around the world die each year as a result of a heart attack. A new technique for diagnosing high-risk patients allows for the prediction of heart attacks years before they occur. (Image: psdesign1 / fotolia.com)

What are the main causes of heart attacks?

The main cause of heart attacks are arteries in which blood flow is blocked due to plaque deposits on the arterial walls. By improving understanding of which plaques are most likely to trigger a heart attack, doctors can treat the most vulnerable patients with more aggressive therapies. The new prediction technique looks for fat-modifying chemical signals released from the most dangerous arterial plaques. By analyzing scan images from computed tomography (CT) of arteries surrounded by fat, scientists were able to predict the risk of fatal heart attacks years before they occurred.

3,900 subjects were medically monitored for the study for ten years

The study on the new warning system for the prediction of heart attacks was presented at the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology, which took place in Munich. The current study monitored 3,900 heart patients from Germany and the US over a period of ten years after undergoing coronary CT or performing a so-called angiogram.

Measurements could reliably detect increased risk

The new early warning system has been able to predict deadly heart attacks many years before they happened. If the results were abnormal, affected patients would be up to nine times more likely to have a fatal heart attack over the next five years compared to patients with a normal outcome. For the first time, a series of biomarkers derived from a routine clinical trial that measures so-called cardiovascular residual risk, which is currently overlooked in all risk assessments and non-invasive tests, is described by study author Professor Charalambos Antoniades Oxford University. If doctors know which patients are at an increased risk of having a heart attack, they can intervene early enough to prevent it.

New form of diagnosis could save many lives

Each year, more than 100,000 people in the UK alone die from a heart attack or stroke, say the researchers. Heart disease and strokes are still the two biggest causes of death worldwide. So far, however, there is no way to detect the potentially deadly accumulation of plaque, which can trigger a heart attack at an early stage. Most scans of the heart are good at detecting blockages caused by large plaques. Small plaques, which can cause a high risk of heart attack, but are not recognized. The new technology will hopefully enable doctors to identify high-risk patients most at risk of having a heart attack and then initiate intensive treatment. This would undoubtedly save many lives. (As)