It sounds a bit sinister, but scientists have now developed a blood test that can predict the risk of dying within a few years. To do this, they look at the troponin level in your blood.
This protein is normally used to rule out that patients with chest pain have had a heart attack. But it now appears that in general it is a signal of an increased risk of death from any cause, even though nothing is known about any pre-existing cardiovascular disease. According to the researchers, troponin can therefore be a general indicator of a healthy life in the medium term.
Troponin without heart complaints
High troponin levels have often been observed in hospitalized patients without heart problems, but the reason for this was never clear, the researchers say. And thus they decided look up the data of 20,000 patients who had a troponin blood test for any reason between June and August 2017. They were 61 years old on average and were treated in a large hospital. More than 90 percent had no clinical reason for a troponin test. Nearly half had not even been hospitalized. Troponin levels were high in 5.5 percent of the patients.
Of the 20,000 patients, 9 percent died after one year, 14 percent died after just two years. The people who died within thirty days after the test were excluded, because they were probably already seriously ill. The participants were almost four times more likely to die within two years if their troponin levels were high during the test compared to the patients who had a normal test result.
Death from cancer
Now, of course, the question is: did these people die of cardiovascular disease, for which troponin is an indicator? Funnily enough, the answer is ‘no’. The researchers also looked at age, sex, hospital location and kidney function and concluded that an abnormally high troponin level was associated with a 76 percent higher risk of dying from any disease. In fact, almost half of the people died from cancer and only 13 percent from cardiovascular disease.
There are some snags to the study. For example, no causal relationship has been demonstrated, only a correlation. The data also comes from a single hospital and relevant personal background information may have been missing.
Mid-term forecast
Yet it remains a remarkable fact: how is it possible that troponin levels have such a great predictive value? It is biologically highly unlikely that the troponin itself leads to an increased risk of death. The protein is much more likely to be produced in a broad spectrum of health conditions, including as-yet undiagnosed conditions, the researchers say.
“This study indicates that troponin is a more general health marker for mid-term prognosis and not just for heart attacks,” the paper reads. The researchers now want to conduct further research to confirm the findings, but also to see whether interventions are possible to reduce this increased risk. Patients could then be tested again after a year, for example, to see whether troponin levels have normalised.
What is Troponin?
Troponin is a protein involved in muscle contraction and relaxation. It occurs in almost all muscles, including the heart muscle. If that muscle is damaged, for example by a heart attack, troponin leaks from the heart muscle cells into the blood. You can measure that and that is why it is an important marker to determine whether someone has had a heart attack. Within two hours after a heart attack, an elevated troponin level can already be observed in the blood.
2023-08-08 17:02:37
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