New tech offers early warning for heart attacks

Even light exercise might lessen severity of a future stroke

OXFORD, England, Oct 6, (RTRS): A new method of analysing images from CT scans can predict which patients are at risk of a heart attack years before it occurs, researchers say.

The technology, developed by teams at Oxford University and institutions in Germany and the United States, uses algorithms to examine the fat surrounding coronary arteries as it shows up on computed tomography (CT) heart scans.

That fat gets altered when an artery becomes inflamed, serving as an early warning system for what one of the researchers believes could be up 30 percent of heart attacks.

“If you are able to identify inflammation in the arteries of the heart then you can say which arteries ... will cause heart attacks,” Oxford Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, Charalambos Antoniades, told Reuters.

“With the new technology that we have we can achieve this by analysing simple CT scans.”

Most heart attacks are caused by a build-up of plaque – a fatty deposit – inside the artery, which interrupts the flow of blood.

Currently, CT scans tell a doctor when an artery has already become narrowed by plaque.

With the new technology, for which the researchers hope to gain regulatory approval on both sides of the Atlantic within a year, doctors will be able to say which arteries are at risk of narrowing.

Arteries

“(We) can say ...your arteries are inflamed and a narrowing will be developed five years down the line. So maybe you can start preventive measures to avoid this formation of the plaques,” Antoniades said.

Heart disease and stroke are the two biggest causes of death worldwide.

“Although we have not estimated the exact number of heart attacks that we can prevent, we could potentially identify at least 20 or 30 percent of the people before they have (one),” Antoniades said.

An Oxford University spin-off company is now developing a service to analyse CT scans from across the globe in around 24 hours.

The research was published in late August in medical journal The Lancet.

People who regularly engage in light to moderate physical activity – like walking four hours a week or swimming two hours weekly – might have less severe strokes than individuals who aren’t as active, a Swedish study suggests.

Researchers examined data on 925 patients who were treated for strokes at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, between 2014 and 2016. Overall, four in five of these patients had a mild stroke.

Slightly more than half of the patients were inactive before their stroke. Compared to this inactive group, people who got at least some exercise before the stroke were twice as likely to have a mild stroke, researchers report in Neurology.

“We knew from earlier research that physical activity could reduce stroke incidence,” said lead study author Malin Reinholdsson of the University of Gothenburg.

Stroke

“However, whether or not prestroke physical activity could also influence stroke severity was not clear,” Reinholdsson said by email.

Patients in the study were 73 years old on average and most of them had what’s known as an ischemic stroke, the most common kind, which occurs when a clot blocks an artery carrying blood to the brain. About 6 percent of patients had hemorrhagic strokes, a less common type that is caused by a ruptured blood vessel in the brain.

To assess pre-stroke activity levels, researchers surveyed participants about the duration and intensity of any exercise they got before they were hospitalized.

Researchers defined “light” activity as walking at a leisurely pace for at least four hours a week, and classified exercise as “moderate” intensity when people did things like swimming, running or walking briskly for two to three hours weekly.

Among 481 people who were inactive, 354, or 74 percent had a mild stroke.

For those who managed light physical activity, 330, or 86 percent had a mild stroke.

And among the 59 participants who got moderate intensity exercise, 53, or 90 percent, had a mild stroke.

Age also mattered, with higher odds of a mild stroke for younger people in the study.

The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how the amount or intensity of exercise might influence stroke severity. Another limitation is that researchers relied on stroke survivors to accurately recall their previous exercise habits, and memory is often compromised after a stroke.

Even so, the results add to evidence suggesting that an active lifestyle can both lower the risk of stroke and reduce the chances that a stroke will be severe, said Nicole Spartano, coauthor of an accompanying editorial and a researcher at Boston University School of Medicine.