Simple Blood Test Can Detect Heart Attack Risk

It’s a simple blood test, but its results could have a huge impact on your health.

A study out of California claims that testing for a particular protein in the blood could tell you whether you’re at risk for heart attack, heart failure, stroke, and in the case of patients with known cardiovascular disease, death.

Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center studied 987 men and women with stable coronary heart disease and found that patients with higher levels of the protein NT-proBNP in their blood had a bigger risk of dying or having a heart attack, heart failure or a stroke.

The protein scientists were screening for is considered a marker for a hormone that appears when the heart is stretched or is under stress.

The patients were split into four groups and were monitored for nearly four years. Twenty-six percent of participants died or had a cardiovascular event during the course of the study.

Researchers found that patients with the highest level of this protein were eight times more likely to die of or have a cardiovascular event within four years.

Echocardiography, an ultrasound of the heart, and angiogram, an X-ray of the heart, are some of the techniques doctors currently use to investigate the probability of heart disease.

If this new test does become available, it will be used on people who already have heart disease but it’s not clear if it will have any impact – they should already be receiving the maximum treatment possible.

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