Abbott has announced promising preliminary results from a study presented at the recent European Society of Cardiology Congress, suggesting that its high sensitive troponin test may help doctors improve the diagnosis and prognosis of patients presenting with symptoms of a heart attack. The test could be particularly beneficial for women, who may have different presenting symptoms and are often under-diagnosed. The study, which is being conducted by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, is evaluating Abbott's ARCHITECT STAT High Sensitive Troponin-I (hsTnI) test.
Cardiac troponin, a protein found in the heart muscle, is considered the preferred biomarker to identify suspected heart attacks, because it can detect injury to the heart. Abbott's hsTnI test can measure very low levels of this protein, which is especially important for women, who often have lower levels of troponin than men.
Researchers shared data from the first 1,126 patients of the study presenting with symptoms of a heart attack. Early findings demonstrate that women have lower peak levels of troponin than men, contributing to the under-diagnosis and therefore under-treatment of heart attacks for women.
When completed in 2016, the study will include more than 25,000 patients, making it one of the largest studies to evaluate the impact of high sensitive troponin tests on patient care.
The ARCHITECT STAT hsTnI assay is commercially available in several countries in Europe, as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil, and it runs on Abbott's fully automated ARCHITECT family of analyzers. The test is currently for research use only in the United States. Read more about the ARCHITECT family of products.
