Doctor’s can’t predict a heart attack before it happens – at least not yet. Scientists say that may all change soon, thanks to a new study that identified certain cells – circulating endothelial cells (CECs) -that are sloughed off from weakened blood vessel walls, which may indicate the first stages of a heart attack.
According to Dr. Eric Topol, lead author of the study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, heart experts believe that heart attacks actually start days before a clot even forms. The first stages involve a weakening or erosion of the blood vessel walls. This then attracts inflammatory cells that damage the endothelial cells lining the inside of the blood vessels, causing cells to undergo mutations and clump together before sloughing off to float around the body.
Topol studied 50 patients who had a heart attack and 44 healthy controls, and discovered that the heart attack patients had more than four times the concentration of CECs in their blood than the controls. Their CECs also appeared misshapen and large, with multiple nuclei, compared to the normal looking CECs of healthy people.
“For the first time, we can isolate these cells through techniques that were not available in 1999,” says Topol. “They are like a window into the process that underlies an imminent heart attack.”
CECs start sloughing off the vessel walls a few days to a week or more before a heart attack occurs, which means testing for CECs can help doctors predict who is on the verge of having one.
“In the long term, now that we have the molecular signature of the CECs, we could put it in a nanosensor that is embedded into a tiny vein in high risk people who are most vulnerable to having a heart attack, and have that sensor talk to their cell phone, so they get an alert that they might have a heart attack in a few days.”
It may be years away, but this may ultimately help thousands of people predict and avoid heart attacks.
