Researchers develop new early warning scan for heart attacks
University of Oxford News Aug 02, 2017
The new imaging technique can be applied as a new feature in routine computed tomography angiography (CTA), and will improve the diagnosis and management of coronary artery disease, enabling timely prevention strategies and improving the treatment of thousands of people living with the disease.
The findings were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The team led by Professor Charalambos Antoniades, Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford, discovered a bidirectional communication between the heart arteries and the fat surrounding them. The team found that the fat surrounding these arteries 'senses' inflammation coming from the adjacent artery, resulting in altered fat composition. A new imaging technology, based on routine CTA, called 'perivascular fat attenuation indexing' (FAI), tracks the changes in the fat surrounding inflamed arteries – even in the absence of visible plaques or narrowings.
The technology also detects those 'vulnerable' plaques that are prone to sudden blockages, flagging the individuals at highest risk for heart attacks. Identifying those individuals without narrowings, but with inflamed heart arteries, is expected to allow deployment of targeted preventive measures, early enough to prevent the development of heart disease. Furthermore, detecting patients with established heart disease who have vulnerable plaques prone to lead to a heart attack, will guide application of the new but expensive therapeutic interventions available, to those of the patients who really need them.
Professor Charalambos Antoniades, who is the lead of the research team at University of Oxford, said: ÂCurrently, CT scans can only identify people who have significant narrowings in their heart vessels. But by then the disease may have already caused damage which cannot be undone, and it is not possible to identify which narrowings might progress to cause a heart attack.
ÂThe new scan offers the potential to find people at an earlier stage of disease and before the damage becomes irreversible. By providing an early warning of disease, the new imaging technique can be used by doctors as the trigger for more powerful treatments designed to reduce the risk of a future heart attack.Â
The paper is titled, 'Detecting human coronary inflammation by imaging perivascular fat.'
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The findings were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The team led by Professor Charalambos Antoniades, Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford, discovered a bidirectional communication between the heart arteries and the fat surrounding them. The team found that the fat surrounding these arteries 'senses' inflammation coming from the adjacent artery, resulting in altered fat composition. A new imaging technology, based on routine CTA, called 'perivascular fat attenuation indexing' (FAI), tracks the changes in the fat surrounding inflamed arteries – even in the absence of visible plaques or narrowings.
The technology also detects those 'vulnerable' plaques that are prone to sudden blockages, flagging the individuals at highest risk for heart attacks. Identifying those individuals without narrowings, but with inflamed heart arteries, is expected to allow deployment of targeted preventive measures, early enough to prevent the development of heart disease. Furthermore, detecting patients with established heart disease who have vulnerable plaques prone to lead to a heart attack, will guide application of the new but expensive therapeutic interventions available, to those of the patients who really need them.
Professor Charalambos Antoniades, who is the lead of the research team at University of Oxford, said: ÂCurrently, CT scans can only identify people who have significant narrowings in their heart vessels. But by then the disease may have already caused damage which cannot be undone, and it is not possible to identify which narrowings might progress to cause a heart attack.
ÂThe new scan offers the potential to find people at an earlier stage of disease and before the damage becomes irreversible. By providing an early warning of disease, the new imaging technique can be used by doctors as the trigger for more powerful treatments designed to reduce the risk of a future heart attack.Â
The paper is titled, 'Detecting human coronary inflammation by imaging perivascular fat.'
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