A new ‘instant’ blood test for heart attacks

Developed by scientists at King's College London, a new blood test can detect damage to heart muscles in under three hours, giving more people a rapid and accurate diagnosis for heart attacks, while averting false alarms far quicker than the current test.

The current test to rule out a heart attack involves an ECG and a blood test called troponin, which needs to be repeated after three hours or overnight. The new test, however, looks for a different biomarker, cMyC, which is found to be more sensitive at detecting damage to the heart muscle following a heart attack as its level increases higher and more rapidly in the blood compared to troponin.

In the study, published in Circulation, researchers carried out both tests on nearly 2,000 people admitted to hospitals in Switzerland, Italy and Spain with acute chest pain and found that that the new test was better at giving patients the all clear within the first three hours of presenting with chest pain.

"Our research shows that the new test has the potential to reassure many thousands more patients with a single test, improving their experience and freeing up valuable hospital beds in accident and emergency (A&E) departments and wards across the country," said Dr Tom Kaier, one of the lead researchers at St Thomas' Hospital in London, to the BBC.

He said that, if the test were to be used routinely, it could provide doctors with reliable results within 15 to 30 minutes but further research was still required. Researchers hope to see it implemented in the next five years.

This story was originally published in the Global Health and Travel issue of January 2018.