$10 test could help spot heart attacks

It is thought the test is particularly effective in picking up cases in women because they appear to have lower troponin levels than men. Photo / Thinkstock

A simple blood test costing about £5 (NZ$10) could help doctors spot twice as many heart attacks in women, a study has claimed.

The British Heath Foundation, which funded the research, says the highly sensitive test could "save many more women's lives" by reducing the risk of them having future heart attacks.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh looked at the effectiveness of a blood test to measure troponin, a protein released from the heart during a heart attack.

The study, published in the British Medical Journal, included more than 1000 men and women admitted to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh with chest pain.

Using the current standard NHS test, almost twice as many men (19 per cent) as women (11 per cent) were diagnosed as having had a heart attack.

But using the new test for men and women, the number of women diagnosed with heart attacks doubled (22 per cent), the BHF said.

It is thought the test is particularly effective in picking up cases in women because they appear to have lower troponin levels than men.

Around 110,000 men and 65,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with a heart attack each year, while women are three times more likely to die from coronary heart disease than breast cancer, according to the BHF.

Researchers are set to carry out a larger clinical trial involving more than 26,000 people to assess whether the new test improves outcomes for patients.

Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director at the BHF, said the results could prove significant.

"If these results are confirmed in the much larger clinical trial we're funding, these results suggest that using a high sensitivity troponin test, with a threshold specific to each gender, could save many more women's lives by identifying them earlier to take steps to prevent them dying or having another, bigger heart attack," he said.

Anoop Shah, clinical lecturer in cardiology at the University of Edinburgh, who worked on the study, said: "While similar numbers of men and women attend the A&E with chest pains, we wanted to know why women are less likely to be diagnosed with a heart attack."

At the moment one in 10 women with chest pains will be diagnosed with a heart attack compared to one in five men.

"Our findings suggest one reason for this difference in diagnosis rates of men and women is that we, as doctors, may have been using a threshold for troponin testing that is too high in women."

- PAA