A novel concept has been developed by a team of Mayo Clinic researchers, led by Virginia Miller that makes uses of blood platelets for defining thrombotic risk. The team is presently testing a theory as part of the Kronos Early Estrogen Prevention Study (KEEPS).

The colleagues of Miller were Muthuvel Jayachandran, Kazaumori Kashimoto, John A. Heit and Whyte G. Owen, all with the Department of Surgery, Physiology and Bioengineering, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN and their work is entitled “Sex Steroids, Platelet Aggregation and Inflammation“.

From News-Medical.Net:

The study focuses on platelets, which are cellular fragments in the blood. Platelets have a phenotype (i.e., a set of physical characteristics) that change and it is known that hormones affect platelet change. The team is examining what happens to platelets in the presence of hormones , whether platelet microvesicles occur more frequently as a result, if a change is triggered by infection, and what may account for thrombotic risk in one woman over another.

The study design takes into account the researchers, belief that three forces , an injury, a platelet effect at the injury, and the inflammation that affects the platelet and the vessel wall , are involved in the development of thrombotic risk.

The study builds on the team’s earlier findings in an animal model. They are applying the earlier results to a human population for the first time using blood taken from the women enrolled in the KEEPS trial. Depending upon the results from this group, a larger trial of 720 samples will be examined.

Dr. Miller remarked that this kind of a research helps in defining risk profiles for a certain health issue.