Israeli start-up develops home heart attack test

 Determining if a spasm of chest pain is due to a heart attack or just indigestion will soon be possible without leaving home thanks to the early detection kit, SensAheart, developed by a Jerusalem-based start-up Novamed.

Analyzing a single drop of blood, the SensAheart device determines the presence of troponin, an enzyme that is released before a myocardial infarction (heart attack) as well as a fatty acid protein that appears after heart attacks, company officials told Xinhua on Thursday.

"Most people don't know they are suffering (a heart attack), because they don't know how to tell the difference between a normal chest pain and a mild stroke," said company vice-president Gavriel Shalmiev.

Shalmiev added that the device is more sensitive and offers " much more accurate results after the blood is filtered and analyzed in the machine."

The device is already sold in Russia and China and Novamed is preparing to introduce it in the United States, where almost 250 thousand people die of heart attacks each year.

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