Key points:
- Researchers compared blood samples of people who had their first heart attack with those from healthy participants and uncovered 90 molecules associated with the risk of a first heart attack.
- The team developed a simple online tool that allows anyone to find out their risk of having a heart attack within six months.
- The study results along with the online tool can help motivate people to take preventative measures.
Heart attacks are the world’s most common cause of death, but many high-risk people are not identified or do not take their preventive treatment. Now, a new study, published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, reveals that heart attacks can be predicted with a standard blood test.
The research team hypothesized that several important biological processes are active during the months before a heart attack. They wanted to develop methods to detect these processes using a simple blood test to identify people who may soon suffer their first heart attack.
Researchers had access to blood samples from 169,052 individuals without prior cardiovascular disease in six European cohorts. Within six months, 420 of these people had their first heart attack and then their blood was compared with samples from 1,598 healthy cohort members.
Following the comparison, the team identified approximately 90 molecules that were associated with the risk of a first heart attack. They hope to use this information to increase people’s motivation to take preventive measures. Additionally, they developed a simple online tool that allows anyone to find out 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,” explained Johan Sundström, professor at Uppsala University. “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.”
As a next step, the researchers will study the 90 new molecules to determine if there are any possibilities of treatment. They also hope to identify whether the online tool provides the motivation to adopt preventive behaviors.