Heart failure affects around 900,000 people in the UK (Picture: Getty Images/Westend61)
A new cheap and simple heart test could soon identify people at the highest risk of dying from heart failure.
Heart failure, sometimes called congestive heart failure, is when a weakened heart can’t pump enough blood to supply the body’s needs.
This might be because someone suffered from a heart attack, has coronary heart disease or the muscles were damaged by heavy alcohol use.
There’s no cure for heart failure, which can reduce quality of life, but researchers hope a new protein test could help guide treatment for patients within five years.
However, a study published in the European Journal of Heart Failure today found that patients with high amounts of a specific protein are more likely to die from a heart complication.
Neuropeptide Y, or NPY, is a chemical that does it all: it regulates brain activity and digestion and our hearts release it when we’re stressed.
Researchers say that a certain brain chemical called NPY should be tested (Picture: Getty Images)
But NPY can make our hearts work harder than it needs to, as the smaller blood vessels in the muscle close up.
About a third of the 800 people involved in the study – all at different stages of heart failure – were found to have higher levels of NPY.
Researchers found they had a 50% higher risk of dying over the three-year follow-up period from a heart complication compared to those with lower levels.
Now researchers think NPY should be tested alongside the hormone currently used to diagnose heart failure, B-type natriuretic Peptide (BNP), to help identify who would benefit from lifesaving implants.
Larger trials are next on the to-do list for them.
Neil Herring, professor of cardiovascular medicine and consultant cardiologist at the University of Oxford, said: ‘The findings of this research are an exciting new development, building on over 10 years of collaborative research on this stress hormone.
‘We hope our research will ultimately benefit the increasing number of patients who are living with the debilitating effects of heart failure daily.
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‘Next, we will investigate whether measuring for very high levels neuropeptide Y could influence whether patients can get lifesaving treatment like ICDs (implantable cardioverter-defibrillators) before the blood test can be rolled out within five years.’
Around 900,000 people in Britain live with heart failure. The figure is likely to rise due to an ageing population and the ever-improving survival rates after a heart attack, according to the British Health Foundation which also funded the study.
Professor Bryan Williams, the research charity’s chief scientific and medical officer, said: ‘This new research suggests that a new, cheap and simple blood test, could help us in future to more accurately spot which patients with heart failure are at highest risk of early death.
‘It is only through funding lifesaving research like this that we can continue to push the boundaries and ensure that people with heart failure receive the best and most suitable treatment to help them live well.’
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