Role of biomarkers in risk stratification of acute coronary syndrome.

Diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) encompasses a wide spectrum of myocardial ischaemia varying from assuredly benign to potentially fatal. Cardiac biomarkers have had a major impact on the management of this disease and are now the cornerstone in its diagnosis and prognosis. In this review we discuss both the established and the newer emerging biomarkers in ACS and their role in highlighting not only myocardial necrosis but also different facets of the pathophysiology of ACS. The future of cardiac biomarker testing may be in multimarker testing to better characterize each patient of ACS and thus tailor both short-term and long-term therapy accordingly. This novel concept, however, needs to be tested in clinical trials for its incremental value and cost-effectiveness.

New, simple and cheap alternative to troponin test for diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction.

Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is often a fatal disorder in humans seen throughout the world. It was earlier diagnosed with some serum enzymes like aspartate transaminase, creatine phosphokinase and its isoenzyme CPK-MB and lactate dehydrogenase which were shown to be increased in AMI. However, in the last few years importance has been given to measuring serum troponins released from the injured myocardium to confirm an AMI. Troponin estimation involves immunological technique, which is expensive with other associated problems like shelf life of reagents, number of samples to be analysed and availability of the kit itself, used for estimation. Under these circumstances the present work involves the measurement of total salt soluble proteins which are proteins associated with troponins also released from myocardium of a patient with AMI. This new test overrules all the disadvantages of the troponin test but seems equally viable and useful for diagnosis of AMI.