The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7227 p803
7 December 2002

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Blood test to predict heart disease

A diagnostic technique that provides an accurate, non-invasive and rapid diagnosis of coronary heart disease has been discovered by researchers in the United Kingdom.

Dr Joanne Brindle, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, and colleagues explain that the technique can be used clinically, either for population screening or to allow for effective targeting of treatments such as statins. It involves nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabonomics (a systems approach to examining changes in hundreds of thousands of low-molecular weight metabolites in an intact tissue or body fluid) and can be carried out on standard preparations of serum, plasma or urine.

The researchers analysed use of the test on blood samples and demonstrated that it is possible to separate patients with stenosis in all three major coronary arteries (severe coronary heart disease) from subjects with normal coronary arteries.

They comment that "whereas currently a firm diagnosis can only be made through application of angiography, which is both expensive and invasive, the introduction of metabonomic screening would allow diagnosis to be made simply and cheaply on the basis of a single blood test" (Nature Medicine 2002;8:1439).

A large-scale clinical trial of the test is under way. Dr David Grainger, Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, involved in the study, told The Journal that the intention is to introduce the trial as a service in early 2005. Initially the test will be available to hospitals for use as an outpatient clinic test. However, versions of the diagnostic test which could be carried out in a primary care setting, such as GP surgeries, are being looked at.