£10 blood test could save lives of heart attack victims, experts say
A BLOOD test costing £10 that measures stress hormone levels after heart attacks could ensure patients receive timely life-saving treatment, researchers at Oxford have found.
Routine testing in the hours after a heart attack could prove “game changing” – saving thousands of lives, the scientists said.
Heart disease, one of Britain’s biggest killers, causes a quarter of the country’s deaths. Around 100,000 people are admitted to hospital after heart attacks, about a quarter of which prove fatal, per year.
Excess deaths have surged 14 per cent since the first pandemic lockdown and 21,000 excess heart deaths have been recorded in the past nine months. Health officials fear thousands missed out on statins as difficulties arose in accessing GP care.
In the Oxford study, researchers investigated hormone levels in the blood of 163 heart attack patients who had undergone emergency treatment to open up a blocked blood vessel. The hormone Neuropeptide Y is released into the heart in response to extreme stress, such as during a heart attack, causing its smallest blood vessels to narrow. The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found that two days after a heart attack, the smallest blood vessels in the heart remained narrowed in patients with the highest Neuropeptide
Y levels. A heart attack occurs when a blockage in a coronary artery cuts off blood supply to part of the heart muscle and it begins to fail. Neuropeptide Y levels were measured in blood samples taken from the veins of patients for an average of some six years. During the follow-ups, 34 patients died or suffered heart failure.
Scientists found that those with the highest Neuropeptide Y levels sustained more heart and lung damage and their hearts were significantly more likely fail even after accounting for other risk factors, such as age, high blood pressure and family history.
Scientists said routine tests in the hours after a heart attack could ensure patients at greatest risk were spotted sooner, and prioritised for treatment which could save lives.
When MRI scans were carried out six months later, such patients had more scarring in their hearts – a sign of damage – and their hearts were unable to pump blood efficiently.
Separate research by the team found that blocking the docking station protein that Neuropeptide Y binds to can stop it affecting blood vessels in the heart in rats. Drugs that could block this hormone are being investigated.
Prof Neil Herring, British Heart Foundation senior research fellow and consultant cardiologist at the University of Oxford, said: “We’re confident that, in time, this stress hormone will become an effective target for future treatments to reduce the life-limiting effects of a heart attack.”