Blood test found to identify patients at risk of heart attack

A troponin blood test, costing between £5 and £20, has been found to predict which healthy patients are at high risk of cardiac failure.

The research, carried out by the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and funded by the British Heart Foundation, indicated it could be better than just checking blood pressure and cholesterol to assess heart risk.

So far, the test has only been carried out on men, but should work in women too.

The test, called troponin, looks for a protein released when the heart muscle is damaged, and is already used to help diagnose men and women who are suspected to have just had a heart attack.

In their study, Prof Nicholas Mills and his colleagues found that men who had higher levels of troponin in their blood were more likely to have a heart attack or die of heart disease up to 15 years later.

Prof David Newby, one of the authors of the study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, said: "Troponin is almost like a barometer of heart health. If it creeps up, that's bad and your risk of heart problems increases. If it goes down, that's good.

"It also appears to predict who benefits from statins and opens a door to a whole new way of testing."

Prof Mills said: "Troponin testing will help doctors to identify apparently healthy individuals who have silent heart disease so we can target preventive treatments to those who are likely to benefit most."