New blood test could help predict upcoming heart attacks or strokes
Researchers at the University of Sydney are developing a brand new test that uses blood from a quick pin-prick test to examine a person's risk of heart attack or stroke.
The device works by picking up on subtle blood flow changes, such as clotting and inflammation, associated with blocked blood vessels. Since blocked blood vessels are often a precursor to heart attack or stroke, any changes in these characteristics could alert the patient and a medical professional to perform any necessary follow-up checks to further evaluate the patient’s condition.
“[Heart attacks and strokes] appear to occur at random, sometimes without any physical symptoms, however in fact there are tiny physical changes that occur in the blood – the key to this device is being able to sensitively monitor these microscopic changes,” Laura Moldovan, a research assistant at the Heart Research Institute in Australia, said in a statement about the device’s development.
Arnold Lining Ju, PhD, a biomedical engineer developing the device, explained more about his vision for how it could be put to use.
“An at-risk person, for example, someone with heart disease, would use it daily," Ju, who is also a group affiliate of the Heart Research Institute’s Thrombosis group, said in the same statement. “If a change was detected, they would need to present for more monitoring at a hospital."
On a larger scale, the device may also be able to shed light on why and how blood clots form in the first place.
The device relies on an integrated microfluidic chip, and builds on the team’s recent research on using a microfluidic post model that allows visualization and analysis of neutrophil-platelet interactions in a three-dimensional flow field, published in Royal Society of Chemistry in March 2022.[1]
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Reference:
1. Ju LA; Kossmann S; Zhao YC; et al. Microfluidic post method for 3-dimensional modeling of platelet-leukocyte interactions. Royal Society of Chemistry. March 14, 2022. DOI:10.1039/d2an00270a. PMID: 35212697.