Friday, March 11, 2011

Implanted Sensors Track Heart-Attack Damage

Tiny implanted sensors can indicate the severity of a heart attack in a mouse, even days after the damage happened. Similar sensors could one day be used to monitor people at high risk of having a heart attack, researchers say.

About 30 per cent of people who experience heart attacks do so without the characteristic chest pains. But biomarkers of the event – unique proteins released by heart cells as they die – remain in their blood.

Some biomarkers hang around for a day, others for a week. So a blood sample drawn days after a suspected heart attack contains only a partial collection of these proteins, complicating diagnosis.


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