New blood test to screen for secondary heart attack
New Delhi, Sep 08 (ANI): Researchers are developing a new blood test which could screen if a person is at risk of a secondary heart attack. The Baker Institute's head of metabolomics, Professor Peter Meikle and his team have identified plasma lipid biomarkers (fats in the blood) that improve upon traditional risk factors in predicting heart disease and stroke. He says the revolutionary blood test is proposed to be trialled in Australia over the next 2-3 years as part of a broader personalised precision health program currently under development. Eventually, a general practitioner (GP) will be able to order this test in order to better assess a patient's risk of developing heart disease. While there are thousands of lipids in the blood, challenge is to identify which ones best predict disease outcomes. To date, the prototype only provides GP’s and patients with limited information on the basis of 2 lipid markers, and it is not yet available in Australia. The test will be a simple blood test, similar to the process and cost of having a cholesterol test, and could be operated out of hospital pathology laboratories that already contain the necessary equipment. The study has been published in the journal JCI Insight.
