Regular Blood Tests Can Predict a Heart Attack

Using the results of a normal blood test and an online tool, you can determine whether you are at a higher risk of having a heart attack within six months. A study group at Uppsala University created the application in the hopes of enhancing patients’ motivation to make lifestyle changes.

Their work was published in the journal Nature Cardiovascular Research.

Heart attacks are the leading cause of death worldwide, and their prevalence is increasing. Many high-risk individuals are not recognized or do not receive preventative care.

Researchers led by Professor Johan Sundström of Uppsala University have discovered that a simple blood test can predict a heart attack. The difficulty, according to the researchers, is that risk factors have previously been validated in studies with five to 10 years of follow-up, allowing only those that are stable over time to be identified.

“However, we know that the time just before a heart attack is very dynamic. For example, the risk of a heart attack doubles during the month after a divorce, and the risk of a fatal heart event is five times as high during the week after a cancer diagnosis,” says Sundström who is a cardiologist and epidemiology professor at Uppsala University.

He and other European researchers started with the premise that numerous critical biological processes are active in the months leading up to a heart attack and might be detected with a simple blood test.

“We wanted to develop methods that would enable the health services to identify people who would soon suffer their first heart attack,” Sundström said.

The researchers got access to blood samples from 169,053 people in six European cohorts who had no history of cardiovascular disease. Within six months, 420 of these individuals experienced their first heart attack. Their blood was then compared to that of 1,598 healthy members of the cohort.

Sundström added “We identified around 90 molecules that were linked to a risk of a first heart attack. However, the samples that are already taken in health care are enough to predict the risk. We hope that this will increase people’s motivation to take their preventive medicine or stop smoking, for example.”

The researchers have created a simple online tool that allows anyone to determine their risk of having a heart attack within six months.

“This was one of the aims of the entire study since we know that people feel relatively low motivation to follow preventive treatments. If you find out that you happen to have an increased risk of suffering a heart attack soon, perhaps you will feel more motivated to prevent it,” said Sundström.

The researchers will now investigate the 90 or so novel compounds to gain a deeper understanding of them and determine whether they have any therapeutic potential.

Sundström concludes, “We hope to be able to carry out a new study here in Uppsala to see whether the online tool provides the kind of motivation we intend.”

One of the six cohorts comes from the Uppsala-based population study, EpiHealth.

More information: Stefan Gustafsson et al, Markers of imminent myocardial infarction, Nature Cardiovascular Research (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44161-024-00422-2

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