The Key to Prevention—Mexican Scientists Develop New Device to Monitor Developing Cardiovascular Disease

With staggering statistics of the American Heart Association and other researchers in the field of cardiology proving that Hispanics/Latinos over the age of 20 have a greater than 30 percent incidence of cardiovascular disease, researchers in Mexico have begun developing a device that will monitor cholesterol and triglyceride levels-all without a single drop of blood.

Using a deep understanding of the physics involved in pumping of blood throughout arteries and veins, researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) are developing a wrist monitor that will track cholesterol and triglyceride levels using the viscosity of blood, a measurement they can calculate using blood pressure and complex algorithms.

"The idea is to have a device, much like a watch, that can measure the pressure of blood [in addition to] cholesterol and triglycerides" lead researcher Leonardo Moreno Morales said. "With this method, it is not necessary to draw the liquid blood to obtain the data; a great advantage in healthcare."

A professional blood analyst, Moreno Morales and his team began their research with 300 patients of known cholesterol and triglyceride levels to develop their studies. Using primary characteristics of the biochemicals, the team began to interpret the effect these large molecules had on the viscosity of blood.

Having to tackle many difficulties, such as the varying effects of individuals' biochemical composition on coagulation and blood flow, the team has finally found the breakthrough they were looking for in the simple calculation of blood pressure. Using complex analytics and an understanding of how increasing ratios of cholesterol and triglycerides affect blood thickness (viscocity), the team can now give estimate levels with close precision and accuracy, although blood samples continue to be the prevalent means of monitoring the development of heart disease.

With such a large population of obese patients, second only to the United States, Mexico like many other Latin-American countries faces ever-increasing rates of cardiovascular diseases that lead to heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and possibly death. In developing an alternative means of monitoring the causes of cardiovascular disease, Moreno Morales hopes to better understand the disease that affects millions of Latinos, and how varying diets can affect the development in younger patients once deterred in studies by the drawl of blood.