In a study involving over 100 patients, international scientists have used spectroscopy to find the cause of patients' chest pain. 

'We started the study [as if looking] through the eyes of a doctor saying there is a symptom,' says Wolfgang Petrich from Roche Diagnostics, Mannheim, who led the investigation. The international team - from Germany, the US, Canada, Austria, Sweden and Spain - analysed serum samples using a combination of mid-infrared spectroscopy and statistical techniques. They found that they could identify particular shapes in the spectra of samples from patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) - heart cell death or damage brought about by a heart attack. This was in contrast to spectra from samples taken from patients with the same symptom of acute chest pain, but without AMI. 

Swift and accurate diagnosis of the cause of chest pain is key to reducing mortality and Petrich's diagnostic pattern recognition method can recognise biochemical markers of AMI much earlier than the cardiac markers currently analysed. Another key benefit is that the patients' spectra can be stored and referred to retrospectively. This means they can not only be used to check against to see if a patient is responding positively to treatment but that clinical studies in the pharmaceutical industry could also use the results of the study. 

The infrared spectra of serum samples from patients with AMI show differences in some spectral regions (dark blue)

'Considering that myocardial infarction is a common presentation of ischemic heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in developed countries, this report might contribute significantly to a dissemination of the technique,' says Christoph Krafft from the Institute of Photonic Technology, Jena, Germany, who is an expert on the use of spectroscopy in medicine.

Petrich says that the starting point for the idea was a reagent-free analysis. 'You basically look at the sample without adding any reagents,' he says. 'You don't have to store reagents and you don't have to think about the waste, which you would have to in using radioactive tracers, for example.' 

Petrich emphasises that the results still need to be confirmed on a larger scale. The next step will be to check for further factors which could have an impact on the results.  

Jennifer Newton

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