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of ongoing plaque rupture and as a warning of possible heart attack in the near future. validated in an independent cohort, the new work suggests that tell-tale CECs may be useful in the clinic as evidence disease (narrowing of arteries in the legs and feet). Although the study must be conducted in more patients and ECs with larger cellular and nuclear areas, relative to age-matched controls and patients with peripheral vascular . also found that acute MI patients specifically displayed multicellular, multinuclear EC clusters and et al death. Damani significantly in patients, relative to controls, and this elevation was not correlated with other measures of heart tissue had experienced a type of heart attack known to manifest after acute arterial plaque rupture. CECs were elevated permit isolation of rare cells, the authors measured and characterized CECs in healthy subjects and in patients who Using automated, clinically feasible, three-channel fluorescence microscopy technology that can detect and catastrophes, but these measures have not yet made it into the clinic. lethal plaque rupture. Elevated amounts of circulating endothelial cells (CECs) were previously linked to acute arterial vessels, and leakage into the circulation is evidence of ongoing injury to arteries that occurs on the way to potentially increasing in incidence as the population ages and widens. Endothelial cells (ECs) are normally found lining the blood feasible assay for a macromolecule or cell in blood that can identify people at risk for this condition, which is cardiovascular maladies caused by atherosclerotic plaque rupture. Physicians thus require a noninvasive, clinically using stress tests and coronary artery imaging. In contrast, there are no clinically useful tests that warn of impending possible a heart attack as a result of plaque rupture. Indeed, diagnosis of stable coronary artery disease (CAD) is now Many people tell a personal story of a friend or relative who had a normal stress test just weeks before suffering acute atherosclerotic plaque rupture. associated event: − defining a clinical measure that could predict a thus-far unpredictable, myocardial infarction (MI) . take crucial first steps toward et al crucial time in the pathophysiological process of heart disease. Now, Damani before suffering a heart attack? The tale told could be frightening, yes, but the information may allow intervention at a unwanted evidence of his guilt. But what if the body could leak evidence of a fragile condition −− corpse underfoot the floorboards. The guilty murderer imagines that he hears the beating of the dead man's heart emanating from the , the narrator murders an old man and hides the body under The Tell-Tale Heart In Edgar Allan Poe's short story Tell-Tale Cells