But not all heart attacks are the same, and the development of better treatment approaches requires understanding the distinction between heart attacks that result from blood clots after a plaque rupture and those that do not.
Research now underway at New Mexico State University seeks to advance the understanding of what causes heart attacks and differentiate between heart attack types at a molecular level.
Patrick Trainor, assistant professor of applied statistics at NMSU, leads a team of physicians and scientists from three universities who are working on an in-depth study of blood samples from heart attack patients. The project is part of a long-term collaboration with Dr. Andrew DeFilippis, a cardiologist and clinician-scientist at Vanderbilt University.