HealthCentral: Can a Blood Test Diagnose Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy?
HealthCentral recently interviewed Florian Rader, MD, MSc, co-director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Clinic in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, about whether a biomarker-based blood test could detect hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM)—a commonly undiagnosed and misdiagnosed genetic heart condition.
HCM causes thickening of the heart walls, which makes it harder for the heart to pump blood. Because it can sometimes cause the heart to stop beating—even in people who were not aware they had the condition—investigators are studying whether a diagnostic blood test that detects changes in heart muscle could lead to earlier treatment and prevention of cardiac arrest.
Rader, who is not involved in the development of a diagnostic blood test, told HealthCentral HCM often is misdiagnosed because if a person does have symptoms—such as shortness of breath or chest pain—they’re similar to those of other diseases.
“There are several imposters of HCM,” he said. “They include untreated high blood pressure, which can lead to heart-muscle thickening and can have the appearance of HCM.”
Rader told HealthCentral one challenge in the development of a diagnostic blood test is targeting—or testing for—useful biomarkers that would indicate HCM rather than other conditions.
“Biomarkers [are] rarely specific to one disease,” he said, and they “usually reflect an abnormality within a molecular pathway that could have several causes.”
Rader told HealthCentral the more established diagnostic tests for HCM—genetic testing, electrocardiogram, echocardiogram and cardiac MRI—are currently the best options in the absence of a reliable blood test but added, “certainly this type of research is important and may lead us in the right direction.”
Click here to read the complete article from HealthCentral.