March 21, 2012

expert reaction to new research into possible biomarkers to predict heart attacks

A paper in Science Translational Medicine suggested that a new test could potentially predict a heart attack a week or two before the event happened by spotting abnormal cells in blood vessels.

Professor Peter Weissberg, Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said:

“This is an interesting study and represents a new approach to trying to predict who might be at risk of an impending heart attack. However, the current study only shows that patients in the throes of a heart attack have abnormal cells. It does not show that such cells were present before the heart attack started. This will have to be explored in future studies. It will also be important to show that the abnormal cells only appear during a heart attack and are not also present in other illnesses.”

Prof John Martin, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at University College London & Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Yale, said:

“In my opinion this is a poor paper, for the following reasons: (1) Blood was taken to identify the circulating cells after myocardial infarction, therefore the phenomenon could be an effect of the infarct, not a cause; (2) The control group should have been patients with chest pain without MI as opposed to “normal”; (3) There was no reference to the extensive European literature on circulating cellular phenomena that can be measured in the blood and may be causal to MI (see my own work on platelet size with approximately 15 clinical studies).”

Dr Tim Chico, Consultant Cardiologist, MRC Centre for Developmental and Biomedical Genetics, University of Sheffield, said:

“This is a very interesting preliminary study, but the jury is still out on whether this approach will truly be able to identify patients before they have a heart attack. If the circulating cells can be detected weeks before a heart attack then this would be very exciting. If we can identify patients before a heart attack it raises the question of whether current treatments would reduce the risk of developing a heart attack. As we understand more about what these cells are telling us it will become clearer whether we can use them as a useful test.”

‘Characterization of Circulating Endothelial Cells in Acute Myocardial Infarction’ by Damani et al., published in Science Translational Medicine on Wednesday 21 March 2012.