When it comes to heart attacks, timely response is crucial. A groundbreaking blood test is now capable of diagnosing heart attacks in just minutes instead of hours, offering potential use for first responders and for individuals at home.
“Immediate medical attention during a heart attack is vital to enhance patient outcomes. However, early diagnosis is essential but can be quite difficult, especially outside a healthcare facility,” explained Peng Zheng, the lead author and an assistant research scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “We developed a new technology that can swiftly and accurately determine if someone is experiencing a heart attack.”
This innovative proof-of-concept work, which can also be adjusted to identify infectious diseases and cancer indicators, has been recently published in Advanced Science.
Zheng and senior author Ishan Barman focus on creating diagnostic tools using biophotonics, which involves utilizing laser light to identify biomarkers—bodily responses to various conditions, including diseases. They applied this technology to detect the earliest signals in the blood during a heart attack. Although over 800,000 individuals suffer heart attacks annually in the United States, diagnosing them remains quite complex due to the diverse symptoms and subtle biological indicators in the early phases of an attack when immediate medical help can be most effective.
Individuals suspected of having heart attacks generally undergo several tests for confirmation, starting with electrocardiograms to assess the heart’s electrical activity, typically taking around five minutes, followed by blood tests to identify indicators of a heart attack, which require at least an hour for lab results and often need repetition.
In contrast, the standalone blood test formulated by the team delivers results within five to seven minutes and is reported to be both more accurate and cost-efficient compared to existing methods.
Originally designed for rapid diagnostics in healthcare environments, this test could also be transformed into a portable device for first responders or even for personal use at home.
“We’re focusing on speed, accuracy, and the capability to conduct tests outside a hospital setting,” stated Barman, a bioengineer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “We envision this evolving into a handheld device similar to a Star Trek tricorder—just a drop of blood and you can obtain results in seconds.”
The core of this invention lies in a miniature chip embedded with a revolutionary nanostructured surface that tests the blood. This chip’s “metasurface” amplifies electrical and magnetic signals during the Raman spectroscopy analysis, allowing heart attack biomarkers to be detected within seconds, even at very low concentrations. This tool is sensitive enough to identify heart attack indicators that traditional tests might overlook or detect only later during the attack.
While the primary goal is to diagnose heart attacks, the researchers believe this tool can also be adapted to identify cancer and infectious diseases.
Barman noted, “There is significant commercial potential here. This platform technology has no limitations.”
The next steps for the team include further refining the blood test and beginning larger clinical trials.
The authors of the research include Lintong Wu, Piyush Raj, Jeong Hee Kim, Santosh Paidi, all from Johns Hopkins, alongside Steve Semancik from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
