Dubai: A blood test worth just Dh55 claims to detect a heart attack in the first 30 minutes of its onset.
The test developed by British scientists, is currently on trial, and will be available in the UAE soon, according to a spokesperson of Randox Laboratories, UK, which have developed the test.
Statistics indicate that heart attacks and Cardio Vascular Disease (CVD) are the single biggest killers in the UAE accounting for almost a quarter of all deaths.
The revolutionary test seeks out a protein in the blood called H-FABP (Heart Type Fatty Acid Binding Protein). This is released during the early stages of a heart attack and because it is so small, it can only be detected when the heart cells are being damaged .
H-FABP can be detected as early as 30 minutes after the onset of a heart attack, but traditional tests can take up to six hours to provide confirmation by which time cell death may have occurred.
Doctors are beginning to see H-FABP as a means of “ruling out heart attack” when a patient complains of chest pain.
An independent study published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, carried out by the Leeds Institute for Genetic, Health and Therapeutics, tested 1,500 patients who suffered a heart attack. The researchers examined H-FABP levels in the blood as well as troponin — the biomarker traditionally used to diagnose a heart attack.
They tracked the patients for a year and found that patients who tested positive for troponin, but negative for H-FABP had only a 4 per cent chance of dying within the year. However, in those patients who tested negative for troponin, but positive for H-FABP, the likelihood of death within 12 months had risen to more than 20 per cent.
The research was led by internationally renowned cardiologist Professor Alistair Hall.
Dr Gary Smyth, medical director at Randox Laboratories, hoped the test will become widely available so that doctors can identify and prioritise patients at risk.
“In many cases people with chest pain aren’t suffering a heart attack, and current cardiac tests are not as sensitive as clinicians would like, resulting in many patients being admitted unnecessarily, taking up beds and using valuable resources. However if the H-FABP test was added to existing tests on arrival at hospital, doctors could quickly and accurately rule out those patients who are not having a heart attack, allowing resources to be focused on those who are actually at high risk,” he said
