A groundbreaking new blood test has been developed that can diagnose heart attacks within minutes, a major improvement over current methods that often take hours.
This new test could potentially be adapted for use by first responders or even at home, offering a much-needed solution for the rapid detection of heart attacks.
Heart attacks are medical emergencies where every second counts. Early diagnosis and treatment can significantly improve patient outcomes, but diagnosing a heart attack quickly, especially outside of a hospital, is extremely challenging.
Symptoms vary from person to person, and the biological markers that signal a heart attack can be subtle or slow to appear.
Peng Zheng, the lead author of the study and assistant research scientist at Johns Hopkins University, explains the significance of the new technology:
“Immediate medical intervention is critical during heart attacks, but diagnosing them early has always been a challenge, particularly outside a clinical setting. Our new test can quickly and accurately identify if someone is having a heart attack.”
The research, recently published in Advanced Science, is a proof-of-concept for a technology that could potentially be adapted to detect not only heart attacks but also infectious diseases and cancer biomarkers.
Zheng and the study’s senior author, Ishan Barman, specialize in using biophotonics—a method that uses laser light to detect disease-related biomarkers in the body.
Heart attacks are a common yet tricky condition to diagnose. In the United States alone, more than 800,000 people suffer heart attacks each year.
While there are some established methods for diagnosing heart attacks, such as electrocardiograms (ECGs) to measure heart activity, these tests can take several minutes and may not always be conclusive.
Blood tests to confirm heart attacks are also used, but the lab work typically takes at least an hour and may need to be repeated.
The new blood test, however, can provide results in just five to seven minutes, offering not only speed but also greater accuracy and affordability compared to current testing methods.
The core of this invention is a tiny chip that features a groundbreaking nanostructured surface, where the blood is tested.
This chip’s “metasurface” is specially designed to enhance the electric and magnetic signals in the blood during Raman spectroscopy, a process that makes the biomarkers for a heart attack visible in just seconds, even when they are present in extremely low concentrations.
In fact, the test is so sensitive that it can detect heart attack biomarkers that might go unnoticed by current diagnostic tests, or that would only be identified much later in an attack when the damage is already more severe.
Although the tool was initially designed for heart attack diagnosis, its creators believe it could easily be adapted to detect other conditions such as cancer and infectious diseases.
According to Barman, a bioengineer at Johns Hopkins, “There’s enormous commercial potential here. The platform isn’t limited to just heart attacks—it could be used to detect a variety of serious health conditions.”
In the future, the test could become a handheld device, similar to what we see in science fiction, where a single drop of blood could yield results almost instantly.
Barman envisions it as something like a “Star Trek tricorder,” providing a fast, accurate diagnosis with just a small blood sample.
The research team, which includes scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, plans to continue refining the test and conducting larger clinical trials to ensure its effectiveness.
With further development, this technology could revolutionize the way heart attacks and other serious health conditions are diagnosed and treated, potentially saving many lives by speeding up the critical early intervention process.
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 information about heart health, 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.
The research findings can be found in Advanced Science.
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