Blood test may flag early protein changes linked to heart disease
The assay reported 95% sensitivity and specificity for disease-related heart involvement—measures of how well it identified affected and unaffected people.
850 participants, cross-sectional study
Limit: The study did not measure future heart disease in symptom-free carriers
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
In an observational study, researchers evaluated the Amyfold blood test using up to 850 plasma samples from up to 212 individuals. Testing included people with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, a heart disease involving protein deposits, and symptom-free carriers of inherited disease variants. The assay measured abnormal folding of transthyretin, the protein involved.
In a blinded validation study of people with the nonhereditary form, misfolding signals were associated with heart-wall thickness, a blood marker of heart injury and the heart’s pumping ability. Follow-up of 32 symptom-free carriers, involving 288 samples, found progressive misfolding in some. Others already had substantial misfolding at the start. The researchers suggested that misfolding could be an early marker, although some signals may reflect a later disease phase.
Why it matters
Diagnosis of this cause of heart failure often comes after substantial heart damage. Measuring earlier molecular changes may help identify people at risk and support monitoring of disease progression and treatment response.
Caveats
The observational results do not establish how accurately the test predicts future heart disease in symptom-free carriers. The report is a conference abstract and gives no ages or detailed population breakdown.
- Proteomics
- Protein folding and chaperones
- Proteostasis
- Transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy
- Hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis
- Humans
