Blood test picks the right drug to stop heart attacks

A new blood test could spare survivors from a repeat heart attack or stroke.   

The TRIPLEcheck test, developed at the University of Reading, helps doctors make better prescribing decisions to prevent heart attacks and strokes.     

There are 200,000 heart attacks and strokes in the UK every year – around one every 2.5 minutes. The majority of these patients are given antiplatelet drugs. These drugs prevent a second heart attack or stroke by stopping platelets, the tiny blood cells that block blood vessels in heart attacks and strokes, from clumping together.     

These drugs don’t work in some patients, however, and in others they work too well, causing bleeding. The TRIPLEcheck test can show doctors where platelets are likely to keep clumping, and stepping it down where bleeding is the greater danger. Getting this balance right could turn the tide against repeat heart attacks and strokes.    

Professor Jon Gibbins, who led the work at the University of Reading, said: "For decades, every patient has been given the same drugs at the same strength, even though scientists know that patients' platelets respond differently to medication from person to person. Our inability to give the right medication to the right patient is part of why second heart attacks and strokes keep happening.    

“TRIPLEcheck lets us measure each patient's risk before we choose their treatment, making medicines safer and more effective. Our trial could improve the treatment of heart attacks and strokes worldwide, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths and saving the NHS millions of pounds every year."  

Trial underway    

Heart and blood vessel disease claims about a third of all deaths around the world, adding up to around 20 million deaths every year and touching over 500 million lives. In the UK, it takes around 170,000 lives a year, more than a quarter of all deaths in the country. Drugs that stop blood clots have already transformed heart care, with death rates from heart and blood vessel disease in the UK falling by three-quarters over the past 60 years. But progress appears to have stalled.    

TRIPLEcheck was designed using data from around 650 healthy volunteers. It was checked on 350 patients with heart disease. The test needs just one small tube of blood, taken alongside a patient's other routine blood tests when they arrive at hospital.     

A new British Heart Foundation trial has just started that will recruit an additional 400 heart attack patients to demonstrate the use of TRIPLEcheck in clinical care.  

HaemAnalytica, a University of Reading spin-out company co-founded by Professor Jon Gibbins and Associate Professor Chris Jones, aims to get TRIPLEcheck into hospitals within five years.