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> BNP Blood Test Predicts Heart Attack
By sedron | November 10, 2007
Wanna know if you’ll get a heart attack? Simply take a blood test.
BNP (Brain-type natriuretic peptide) may be useful as a indicator to identify heart patients at high risk of heart failure within the next 4 years. Its production is elevated when the heart muscle is damaged or under excessive stress (ie, the muscle becomes over-stretched due to inability to pump the blood out of the heart chamber efficiently and timely enough). Each time some blood remains inside the heart chamber, the heart has to pump extra harder next time to get rid of it. If not, more and more blood becomes trapped inside the heart. As the vicious cycle continues, the heart eventually undergoes fatigue and the blood accumulates inside the heart, leading to the so-called “congested” heart failure or heart attack.
Predicting whether someone will have a heart attack or stroke within the next four years could be as simple as taking a blood test.
A study of nearly 1,000 people with stable coronary heart disease found those with the highest levels of a protein linked to stretched or stressed heart muscle were nearly eight times more likely to die or to have a heart attack, stroke or heart failure than those with the lowest levels.
The findings held after all other risks factors, such as high blood pressure, were taken into account. As well, the blood test identified people at high risk even when other routine tests assessing heart function came back normal.
“That was what was so amazing,” said principal author Dr. Mary Whooley, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Her team’s research is published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
“Even in patients who had totally normal echocardiograms (an ultrasound of the heart), this marker was predicting greater risks. Obviously, it’s picking up something we can’t see by echo and haven’t been able to detect with other routine tests.”She is not suggesting that “tomorrow everybody should go out and have this test,” says Whooley, a staff physician at the San Francisco VA Medical Centre.
“But there may be a select group of patients who already have heart disease in which this test might help us know they aren’t doing as well and may need more aggressive treatment.”
Almost 74,000 Canadians die each year from cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in Canada.
Heart researchers are searching for biomarkers _ molecules that can indicate whether disease is present, and, if so, how severe it is.
The California team looked at a protein that’s a marker for a hormone called BNP. BNP rises when the heart wall expands because of a blood volume or pressure overload, or is damaged by lack of blood flow to the heart.
The more cardiac “stretch or stress,” the higher the BNP, and the more protein.
Read more on: canada.com
Topics: Medicine, Health & Well Being |