New Blood Test May Detect Early Signs of Heart Attack in 5-7 Minutes: New Research Suggests - Video

With heart attacks, every second counts. A new blood test diagnoses them in minutes rather than hours and could be adapted as a tool for first responders and people at home. The proof-of-concept work, which can be modified to detect infectious diseases and cancer biomarkers, is newly published in Advanced Science.

"Heart attacks require immediate medical intervention to improve patient outcomes, but while early diagnosis is critical, it can also be very challenging -- and near impossible outside of a clinical setting," said lead author Peng Zheng, an assistant research scientist at Johns Hopkins University.

"We were able to invent a new technology that can quickly and accurately establish if someone is having a heart attack."

Zheng and senior author Ishan Barman develop diagnostic tools through biophotonics, using laser light to detect biomarkers, which are bodily responses to conditions including disease. Here they used the technology to find the earliest signs in the blood that someone was having a heart attack.

The stand-alone blood test the team created provides results in five to seven minutes. It's also more accurate and more affordable than current methods, the researchers say.

Though created for speedy diagnostic work in a clinical setting, the test could be adapted as a hand-held tool that first responders could use in the field, or that people might even be able to use themselves at home.

The heart of the invention is a tiny chip with a groundbreaking nanostructured surface on which blood is tested. The chip's "metasurface" enhances electric and magnetic signals during Raman spectroscopy analysis, making heart attack biomarkers visible in seconds, even in ultra-low concentrations. The tool is sensitive enough to flag heart attack biomarkers that might not be detected at all with current tests, or not detected until much later in an attack.

Though designed to diagnose heart attacks, the tool could be adapted to detect cancer and infectious diseases, the researchers say.