A team of researchers from London are looking into new ways of predicting who might be at risk of heart disease or a stroke, which could help save more lives.
The two-year project, funded with a £98,808 grant from national charity Heart Research UK, will work on a unique fingerprint profile of blood fats to identify who may be at risk of heart attacks or strokes in the future as well as helping those currently being treated for cardiovascular disease. The team, led by Professor Manuel Mayr at King’s College London, has used advanced technologies to develop a new test that can measure more than 100 different fats in the blood. They have already found that some types of fats, not measured in current tests, may help to identify people with a higher risk of heart disease or stroke. Currently, the assessment of traditional risk factors like obesity, smoking, lack of exercise, diabetes and high blood pressure fail to predict cardiovascular disease in between a quarter and half of all patients. The grant from Heart Research UK will allow the King’s team to find new biomarkers that can be used together with traditional risk factors to help predict who is at risk of cardiovascular disease – allowing lifestyle changes or medical treatment to be applied sooner to prevent the disease happening, saving more lives.
