An inexpensive blood test could significantly add to your doctors ability to evaluate you for both current and future heart disease. The test is called a BNP test and it can greatly increase your ability to avoid a heart attack.
When your heart is under stress, your heart releases a small protein called B-natriuretic peptide (BNP) into your blood. BNP is typically used for acute diagnosis of heart disease, especially congestive heart failure. For example, if you have shortness of breath, your doctor needs to determine if the cause is your heart or lungs. And BNP can help him determine that. If the peptide is elevated, it points to your heart as the source or having significant involvement. But if the peptide level is normal, he will likely look for lung problems, such as pneumonia.
Since the peptide is made by a stressed heart, it only makes sense that it might be used for prediction of future disease. A recent study, in fact, analyzed it is ability to predict heart disease and the results were very positive. The researchers measured the protein levels in 1,034 patients and followed their health for nine years. People with the highest protein levels were two- and-a-half times more likely to die from any cause than those with the lowest. That is a huge, huge risk!
If your heart releases BNP under stress, then high levels certainly suggest that you are in trouble. But conversely, if you take the right action, the action I recommend in these pages, BNP should fall.
I use this test routinely now in screening and in follow up. If therapy is right for you, your heart should respond by reducing it is BNP production. The test costs less than $50. Even if insurance companies do not honor it is value yet, I think a $50 screening test is small potatoes for the value it brings. A positive test might save your life, especially when you heed the warning and take action to correct your hearts stress.
Ref: New England Journal of Medicine, February 17, 2005; Associated Press, February 17, 2005.