Blood test may give five-year warning of a heart attack

June 20, 2016

Doctors currently use age, sex and blood pressure for heart disease risk
New blood test could revolutionise ways they check patient risk
Test comes after Imperial College London did five year trial

Katie Strick For The Daily Mail

Published:
18:11 EST, 19 June 2016

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Updated:
06:15 EST, 20 June 2016

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A simple blood test could warn you of your risk of having a heart attack over the next five years, scientists have found.

Doctors currently calculate the risk of heart disease using a number of factors including age, sex, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and medical history.

The new test, however, would detect levels of antibodies called IgG antibodies, which appear to protect the body from a heart attack.

A simple blood test could warn you of your risk of having a heart attack over the next five years, scientists have found

According to researchers, those with high levels of these antibodies which are produced by the immune system face a low risk of heart problems, regardless of other factors – including blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

This ‘exciting’ finding could mean that those currently on statins or betablockers have strong enough immune systems not to need them.

Coronary heart disease is currently the biggest killer in the UK, responsible for nearly 70,000 deaths every year. Scientists from Imperial College London and University College London studied more than 1,700 people with a risk of heart problems.

During the five-year trial, people with the lowest antibody levels were found to have the highest heart attack risk.

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Those with the highest number of antibody levels had a 58 per cent lower risk of suffering coronary heart disease or a heart attack and a 38 per cent lower risk of suffering a stroke or other heart event. Dr Ramzi Khamis, the lead researcher and a consultant cardiologist at the national Heart and Lung Institute, said: ‘Linking a stronger, more robust immune system to protection from heart attacks is a really exciting finding.

‘As well as improving the way we tell who is at the highest risk of a heart attack so we can give them appropriate treatments, we now have a new avenue to follow.

‘We hope that we can use this new finding to study the factors that lead some people to have an immune system that helps protect from heart attacks, while others don’t. We also hope to explore ways of strengthening the immune system to aid in protecting from heart disease.’

The new test, however, would detect levels of antibodies called IgG antibodies, which appear to protect the body from a heart attack

The study examined patients being treated for high blood pressure, and researchers have now said they need to find out if the link is true for other groups.

Every year an estimated seven million people in Britain are prescribed cholesterol-busting statin pills.

Earlier this month a team of scientists said that taking statins may be a waste of time for the over-60s, because they found no link between high levels of LDL cholesterol and heart disease.

In fact, this ‘bad’ cholesterol may even have a protective effect by warding off infections and disease, including cancer.

Their paper, published in journal BMJ Open, could unsettle one of the major theories of cardiovascular medicine.