A simple scoring system could revolutionise how doctors prevent heart attacks and strokes by identifying patients most likely to benefit from preventive medications, according to a new study.
The breakthrough test, called the TRIPLE Score, measures specific proteins on blood platelets along with the patient's age to help doctors make more informed decisions about prescribing blood-thinning medications such as aspirin and clopidogrel.
Currently, blood-thinning drugs are only given to patients who have already had a heart attack or stroke because these medications can cause serious bleeding in some people. Without a reliable way to predict who might benefit versus who might be harmed, doctors have been unable to prescribe these potentially life-saving drugs preventively to at-risk patients.
The test, which is not yet widely available, is being developed so that it can eventually be used at the point-of-care. This will then be implemented in patient studies to verify that the test can improve their care.
Dr Alexander Bye, lead author of the research at the University of Reading, said: "Around 100,000 heart attacks occur each year in the UK, despite significant progress in preventing them. We must think of smarter ways to use drugs like aspirin if we are going to bring this number down. Our new test will help doctors make sure that patients receive the best treatment and keep their quality of life. Next, we aim to make the test even easier to use by developing a finger prick test, so that it as simple as measuring blood glucose."
Saving lives and saving money
Published this month in Circulation Research , the study team found that their new scoring system successfully identified patients whose blood was more likely to form clots in laboratory tests. The results also aligned with existing risk scores that doctors use to predict a patient's likelihood of having a heart attack in the next 10 years.
The test requires only a small blood sample and could be developed into a straightforward tool that any healthcare provider could use, not just specialists.
Professor Neil Ruparelia, a cardiologist at Royal Berkshire Hospital who was involved in the study, said: "This test could transform heart attack prevention in the NHS. Right now, we're caught in a difficult position - we have medications that can prevent heart attacks, but we can't safely give them to everyone who might benefit because of bleeding risks. With this new test, we can finally identify which patients would benefit most from preventive treatment. For cardiology departments across the country, this means we could protect thousands of at-risk patients while potentially saving the NHS millions in emergency care costs."
The breakthrough comes following the formation of a new University of Reading spin-out company, HaemAnalytica, which was set up to enable wide access to new platelet function tests and to personalise approaches to prevent and treat thrombosis.
