Heart disease and cancer are the two leading causes of death around the world. Until now, they’ve mostly been seen as separate health problems, even though they share some common risk factors like smoking, obesity, and aging. But new research from UCLA Health suggests that the connection between them might run deeper than we thought.
According to a recent study published in JACC: Advances, researchers have discovered that certain blood markers typically used to predict heart problems may also signal a higher risk of cancer—even in people who have no history or symptoms of heart disease.
These findings could change the way doctors look at long-term cancer risk and open up new ways to detect both conditions earlier.
The study focused on two cardiac biomarkers: high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) and N-terminal pro–B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP). These are proteins released into the bloodstream when the heart is under stress.
Doctors already use them to detect or monitor heart disease. What’s new is that even small increases in these markers—levels that wouldn’t usually raise alarms—were found to be linked with a higher risk of developing cancer years later.
Lead author Dr. Xinjiang Cai, a cardiologist and researcher at UCLA Health, explained that this surprising link shows just how closely heart health and cancer risk may be tied.
“These markers are already known for identifying heart problems, but now it looks like they may also help warn us about cancer,” Cai said. “This means the body might be giving us early warning signs long before any disease shows up in scans or symptoms.”
The research team studied data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), which has followed thousands of adults in the U.S. over the last two decades. They looked at 6,244 people between the ages of 45 and 84 who were healthy at the start—none of them had been diagnosed with heart disease or cancer when the study began in the early 2000s.
Participants had their blood tested at the beginning of the study to measure levels of hs-cTnT and NT-proBNP. Over nearly 18 years of follow-up, the researchers tracked which participants developed cancer and analyzed whether those early biomarker levels were linked to cancer risk later on.
The results were striking. People with higher levels of both biomarkers were more likely to develop cancer, especially colorectal cancer. NT-proBNP alone was also associated with a greater risk of lung cancer. These connections held even after adjusting for common cancer risk factors like age, smoking, physical activity, and other health conditions.
While the study doesn’t prove that heart-related proteins cause cancer, it does suggest that subtle changes in heart function might be linked to early disease processes that we don’t fully understand yet. It could also mean that chronic inflammation, stress on the body, or other biological processes common to both cancer and heart disease might be playing a role.
One of the key strengths of the study is its large and diverse sample. The participants came from various ethnic backgrounds and lived in different parts of the country, making the findings more likely to apply to the general population. The research team included experts from top institutions such as UCLA, Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington, and others.
Dr. Cai and his co-authors believe their work could help doctors better predict who is at risk for both heart disease and cancer, potentially allowing for earlier interventions. If future research confirms these results, doctors may one day use heart health blood tests not only to check the heart, but also to spot patients who might need extra cancer screening.
In summary, this study highlights a surprising but important overlap between heart and cancer health. A simple blood test used to monitor your heart could someday help protect you from cancer too.
While more research is needed to understand how and why these biomarkers are linked to cancer, the findings could mark a turning point in how we approach disease prevention—by seeing the heart and cancer not as separate enemies, but as interconnected parts of the same battle for long-term health.
If you care about heart disease, please read studies about a big cause of heart failure, and common blood test could advance heart failure treatment.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about a new way to repair human heart, and results showing drinking coffee may help reduce heart failure risk.
The research findings can be found in JACC: Advances.
Copyright © 2025 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
