Saliva Test Could Aid in Quick Diagnosis of Heart Attack, Study Suggests

According to a new researcher study, researchers have reported that a simple saliva test could speed up heart attack diagnosis. Researchers suggested that this pioneering technique simply require spit of the patients in a tube and can provide results in a span of 10 minutes much faster in comparison to standard blood test that requires at least one hour for the results.

Moreover, rapid diagnosis is required for the patients with heart attack, followed by required treatment, in order to reinstate blood flow to the blocked arteries. Furthermore, researchers also suggested that diagnosis is based on symptoms such as chest pain and an ECG and blood test is conducted for cardiac troponin, a protein that is found in the blood during heart muscle injury.

Dr. Roi Westreich of Soroka, study author, University Medical Centre, Israel, stated, “There is a great need for a simple and rapid troponin test for patients with chest pain in the pre-hospital settings. Currently troponin testing uses blood samples. In this preliminary study we evaluated the feasibility of a novel method using saliva.”

In this study researchers aimed to determine that if cardiac troponin could be detected in the saliva of patients with heart muscle injury. In this study, researchers involved saliva of 32 patients with heart muscle injury with a positive cardiac troponin blood test and also collected saliva samples from 13 healthy volunteers, which were collected in a tube. Researchers utilized half of each sample and the other half remained in its original state.

Later researchers tested processed and unprocessed saliva samples for cardiac troponin and later compared the results from the saliva samples both processed and unprocessed with the blood samples, and observed similar results in the blood findings and the processed saliva, where it differed in unprocessed saliva. Researchers reported around 84% of the processed saliva samples tested positive for troponin, in comparison unprocessed saliva exhibiting 6% result. Moreover, there was no trace of cardiac troponin among healthy participants in both processed and unprocessed saliva samples.