Heart check.
Posted on 01/05/2011 1:27:21 PM PST by raybbr
FARMINGTON— Cardiologists at the University of Connecticut Health Center have identified a protein fragment that when detected in the blood can be a predictor of a heart attack.
Their research, led by Dr. Bruce Liang, director of the Pat and Jim Calhoun Cardiology Center, is published in the Jan. 11 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Cardiologists found that heart attack patients had elevated levels of the protein fragment known as Caspase-3 p17 in their blood.
“We’ve discovered a new biomarker for heart attack, and showed that apoptosis, or a particular kind of cell death, is a cause of heart muscle damage.” Liang said.
“The ability to see a heart attack coming with a simple blood test and to develop new therapies to block apoptosis would enable us to get a head start on treatment and preserve crucial heart muscle and cardiac function.”
If this predictor can be successfully applied, researchers say the discovery would result in another way to diagnose heart attacks and the possible development of a new treatment.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.newbritainherald.com ...
ping
oh goody....now instead of just thinking I’m having a heart attack, I’ll get to know for sure...
Heart check.
bttt
:^)
I think a number of UConn college football fans getting that heartsick feeling of not only losing in the Fiesta Bowl but losing the head coach in two short days time.
Ok, so they HAD elevated levels. Do they really know if that is a symptom or a result of the heart attack? If it's a symptom, how far in advance does the rise occur? An hour? A day? A week? It'd stink if you aren't already sitting in your doctor's office waiting on your lab results to know if you're going to soon be popping up daisies.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for lightning to strike twice : )
bttt
My thoughts exactly. We already have excellent blood tests that show a heart attack is happening, and an ekg can detect subtle changes ( q waves, st segment elevation) before true cell death happens.
It's a result of what is formally called an acute myocardial infarction(AMI), i.e. the loss of myocardium, aka heart muscle, from an abrupt blockage of a coronary artery.
Serum Caspase-3 p17 Fragment Is Elevated in Patients With ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction
The correlations were not tight, suggesting that both necrosis and apoptosis play a role in determining infarct size. The use of this novel assay for the first time sets the stage to investigate this critical balance. The rise and fall of p17 peptide and its correlation with peak cTnI and CK-MB suggest that serum p17 likely came from injured myocardium. A calpain (4) and stretch-mediated (5) myocyte apoptosis may have also contributed to the serum p17 level.Apoptosis is programmed cell death.Limitations include the lack of concurrent myocyte evidence of apoptosis and unknown p17 release kinetics. Designing therapies to inhibit apoptosis may provide benefit to STEMI patients.
It'd stink if you aren't already sitting in your doctor's office waiting on your lab results to know if you're going to soon be popping up daisies.
I doubt if they will be able to do this test any time soon in a doc's office. Hospital maybe, if the test has clinical utility. Most docs' offices send blood samples to outside labs.
Sorry Not Covered under Obamacare ,Too Expensive
Talking about that it takes time to get acceptance. This has been studied for some years:
(Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 2003;23:1276.)
© 2003 American Heart Association, Inc.
Atherosclerosis and Lipoproteins
The p17 Cleaved Form of Caspase-3 Is Present Within Viable Macrophages In Vitro and in Atherosclerotic Plaque
Thomas Q. Nhan; W. Conrad Liles; Alan Chait; John T. Fallon; Stephen M. Schwartz
http://atvb.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/7/1276
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