An American study has just shown the presence of cells circulating in the blood of victims of infarction. This research could allow the development of a predictive test.
And if, thanks to a simple blood test, the doctor was able to alert you by saying: “Attention Sir or Madam, in the next two weeks you may be the victim of a heart attack”. While each year in France around 120,000 people are affected by a heart attack, we can only hope for the development of this type of predictive test. And this is precisely the hope aroused by the publication of an American study in the journal Physical Biology. This team from the Scripps research institute in California has just developed a blood test to identify specific cells that could one day be used as a predictive marker for this type of heart attack.
Cells present only after a heart attack
This study therefore included 79 patients who had suffered a heart attack, 25 who were in good health, and finally 6 others who were going to undergo vascular intervention. The blood test developed by this team involves looking for cells called CECs in the bloodstream. All participants therefore had blood samples, and these researchers set about counting the number of these cells per sample. As a result, only patients who had suffered a heart attack had these cells in very large numbers in their bloodstream. “The aim of this work was to establish evidence that these circulating cells can be reliably detected in patients after a heart attack and do not exist in healthy controls. This is what we obtained, specifies Professor Peter Kuhn, one of the authors of this experiment. Our results were so important compared to healthy volunteers that the next obvious step is to assess the effectiveness of the test in identifying patients in the early stages of a heart attack ”.
A test to predict the infarction 3 weeks in advance and act
“We have many ways to predict the long-term risk of having a heart attack, we also have good tools to diagnose someone who has just had a heart attack, but currently we have nothing to tell you. are going to have a heart attack in the next 3 weeks and yet we need it, ”adds Prof. Peter Kuhn. And the blood test that could be developed from the work of this team would not only be quick to perform, but also inexpensive according to the authors. The next step on which these scientists are already working consists first of all in verifying whether this test remains as effective in people hospitalized for chest pain for example, and therefore potentially under the threat of an imminent heart attack. These researchers speculate that these particular cells could be present and visible for days or even weeks before a clot actually causes the attack. If these promising results are indeed confirmed, the development of this blood test would make it possible, for example, to put patients at high risk of heart attack on anticoagulant treatment. According to this team, it would even be possible to consider the placement of a preventive stent to keep open the artery on the verge of clogging and thus avoid a heart attack.
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