{"id":947850,"date":"2026-10-27T06:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T06:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/947850\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T06:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T06:32:15","slug":"the-blood-test-helping-healthy-people-avoid-silent-heart-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/947850\/","title":{"rendered":"The blood test helping healthy people avoid ‘silent’ heart disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Tucker will never forget the silence when it happened.<\/p>\n

A room full of cardiologists had gathered to watch a small amount of dye being injected into one of her blood vessels, as part of a diagnostic test to see whether her blood was flowing normally.<\/p>\n

“They spun the screen around to me and they said, ‘Mrs Tucker you have a 90 per cent blockage in your LAD [artery],'” she said.<\/p>\n

“‘That’s what we call the widow-maker and you are really close to having a fatal incident.'”<\/p>\n

She was only 33 years old, ate well, went to the gym four times a week and had no family history of heart disease.<\/p>\n

“I’ll never forget that moment of thinking, how did I end up here? What happened?”<\/p>\n

‘Silent’ heart attacks\"Jennifer<\/p>\n

Ms Tucker is one of many who has dealt with coronary plaque. (ABC News: Charlie McLean )<\/p>\n

Ms Tucker was part of a surprisingly large cohort of people with ‘silent’ coronary plaque.<\/p>\n

More than a quarter of first-time heart attack patients have no known risk factors.<\/p>\n

More than a decade after Ms Tucker’s 2013 angiogram, doctors still do not fully understand how plaque, a collection of fat, cholesterol and other substances, can build up in the arteries of otherwise healthy people.<\/p>\n

In the absence of a full understanding of the causes, clinical researchers are focusing on improving testing.<\/p>\n

“There is a major unmet need now for the detection of the actual coronary plaque that causes heart attacks,” cardiologist and clinical researcher Gemma Figtree said.<\/p>\n

She is leading a team of researchers at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital who believe they are on the cusp of changing that.<\/p>\n

\"Dr<\/p>\n

Dr Figtree leads a team of researchers. (ABC News: Charlie McLean )<\/p>\n

Coronary plaque screening process<\/p>\n

The research team has developed a screening process, based on blood samples and CT scans from more than 5,000 heart disease patients, which they believe can detect plaque before symptoms appear.<\/p>\n

Dr Figtree said the team had found five common characteristics, or “biomarkers”, from the studied samples.<\/p>\n

The idea is that a simple blood test could pick up these biomarkers and prompt a referral for a CT scan to confirm the presence of coronary plaque.<\/p>\n

Dr Figtree said it was a combination of tests that had never been developed before.<\/p>\n

“We’ve always dreamed about this,” she said.Gender gap in heart attack care narrowing, but not fast enough<\/a><\/p>\n

Australian women having a heart attack are less likely to be promptly diagnosed and treated compared to men, although the gender gap in cardiac care is narrowing.<\/p>\n

“The paradigm shift needs to happen now so we can detect and treat this at scale, not just for the wealthy who’ve got access to CT scans.”<\/p>\n

To scale up the project, philanthropic partner North Foundation is raising $8 million to accelerate clinical trials and build the necessary infrastructure to get screening kits into the hands of GPs around the country.<\/p>\n

Were that to become a reality, people in regional and remote communities stand to benefit most.<\/p>\n

Hopes to bridge healthcare divide<\/p>\n

In Australia, the further you live from a major city, the more likely you are to have a heart attack.<\/p>\n

Indigenous adults experience heart attacks at almost three times the rate of non-Indigenous adults.<\/p>\n

\"general<\/p>\n

Mark Tattersall with Dr Figtree. (Supplied: NORTH Foundation)<\/p>\n

In the outback north-west NSW town of Bourke, general practitioner Mark Tattersall said two-thirds of the Indigenous patients who came through his door had significant coronary artery disease.<\/p>\n

“People are dying in their mid-40s from heart attacks and they’re unexpected,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s challenging because you have to deal with the family that’s sort of left behind. Because only last week Mum was home and now Mum’s gone and they’re organising funerals and things like that.”<\/p>\n

\"Jennifer<\/p>\n

Ms Tucker is now an advocate for heart disease research. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Back in Sydney, Ms Tucker, who is now 48 years old and an advocate for heart disease research, believes the screening project is a breakthrough moment.<\/p>\n

“There’s such an immense opportunity for us to continue the scientific efforts and establish even more biomarkers,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Because fundamentally there shouldn’t be people like me, age 33 with a couple of children, that are in that scenario. But even worse, people who are in that scenario and don’t actually make it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jennifer Tucker will never forget the silence when it happened. A room full of cardiologists had gathered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":947851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[324479,49,48,324480,33284,324483,324484,324478,84,392,3653,324482,324477,324486,324481,324485,994,291957],"class_list":["post-947850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-silent-heart-disease","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cardiologist-and-clinical-researcher-gemma-figtree","tag-coronary-artery-disease","tag-coronary-plaque","tag-ct-scan-for-heart-disease","tag-dr-gemma-figtree","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-heart-attack","tag-heart-disease-clinical-trials","tag-heart-disease-screening-program","tag-indigenous-rates-of-heart-disease","tag-jennifer-tucker","tag-mark-tatterall","tag-research","tag-royal-north-shore-hospital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/947851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}