Heart attacks have been the leading cause of death in the United States for many years. Traditional treatments usually focus on breaking down blood clots that have already formed.
While effective, these treatments often come with risks, particularly excessive bleeding.
But now, researchers at Georgia Tech have discovered a promising new way to prevent blood clots from forming in the first place.
Even more surprising, this method uses a common, affordable drug called N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), which is already widely used to treat acetaminophen (paracetamol) overdose.
The study, published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, showed that NAC can completely stop blood clots from forming.
Because NAC is already approved for medical use, this new application could become available much faster than if it were a brand-new drug.
This could be especially important for people who have already had a heart attack and are at high risk of having another one.
In the future, it might even be used to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and other clot-related problems in high-risk individuals.
To understand how NAC works, it’s important to know how blood clots form. When an artery gets damaged, the body reacts by forming a blood clot to stop the bleeding. A protein called von Willebrand factor (VWF) is crucial in this process.
Normally, VWF is coiled up and inactive. But when it senses an injury, it unravels and becomes sticky, grabbing onto platelets—the blood cells that help form clots.
This reaction is necessary to stop bleeding, but it can also be dangerous if clots form inside blood vessels where they’re not needed. These unwanted clots can block blood flow, leading to heart attacks or strokes. Current drugs that prevent blood clots mainly work by stopping platelets from clumping together.
However, they often come with a big risk: they can cause serious bleeding. According to David Ku, a professor at Georgia Tech who led the study, this leaves doctors with a tough choice. He explained, “We can give you a drug that might help prevent another heart attack, but it could also cause a lot of bleeding.”
Ku and his team wanted a solution that could prevent clots without the bleeding risk. That’s where NAC comes in. Unlike traditional drugs, NAC works by breaking down the VWF protein before it has a chance to unravel and form clots. This prevents the sticky reaction from happening in the first place.
Previous research had looked at using NAC to break down clots after they formed, but Ku’s team decided to take a different approach: they aimed to stop the clots from forming at all.
One of the big advantages of NAC is its strong safety record. It’s been used safely for years to treat other medical conditions, which means doctors already know it’s not likely to cause harm.
According to Christopher Bresette, a postdoctoral researcher on the team, “Using an existing drug for a new purpose can speed up the process of helping patients.” This is because repurposing a drug that is already approved is much faster than getting approval for a completely new one.
To test their idea, the researchers ran experiments at Georgia Tech’s Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. They simulated blood flow through a narrowed artery—similar to the kind of blockage that can lead to heart attacks or strokes. In these tests, NAC completely prevented the formation of blood clots.
They then tested NAC in mice, and the results were just as promising: NAC stopped blood clots from forming without causing any increase in bleeding. Even after NAC left the bloodstream, it continued to protect the arteries for about six hours. This lasting effect is especially promising for people at high risk of heart attacks.
The researchers believe NAC could be incredibly helpful for people who have already had a heart attack, who are at high risk of having another one soon after. In these cases, an intravenous (IV) injection of NAC could be used to lower this risk immediately.
Over time, NAC might even be taken as a daily pill to reduce the chance of heart attacks, strokes, and other problems caused by blood clots.
The potential uses for NAC go beyond just heart attacks. It could also help prevent embolisms and other blockages in blood vessels. Because NAC is already widely available and affordable, it could be quickly used in medical settings if further studies confirm its effectiveness.
The researchers are planning clinical trials to see if the results hold true in humans and to work towards FDA approval for using NAC in this new way.
This discovery could mean that people at risk of heart attacks or strokes may soon have access to a safer and more affordable way to prevent blood clots. Since NAC has been around for years and is known to be safe, it might not be long before it’s used to protect millions of people from life-threatening blood clots.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that vitamin K helps cut heart disease risk by a third, and a year of exercise reversed worrisome heart failure.
For more health information, please see recent studies about supplements that could help prevent heart disease, stroke, and results showing this food ingredient may strongly increase heart disease death risk.
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