Project 461790

Blood clots cause many diseases. Thus blood thinners are commonly used medications, especially in those over 75 years old. Until 8 years ago the most common blood thinner was warfarin. Warfarin needs frequent blood tests to measure its effect because it interacts with foods and medications. New direct acting blood thinners are now prescribed more than warfarin. They are preferred because they have less interactions with foods and drugs. Blood is rarely tested for the new direct acting blood thinners, and, the tests to do so, need specialized laboratories with a turnaround of at least hours. Routine blood testing is not needed for these new blood thinners. But there are exceptions. Did the patient stop their blood thinner before surgery requiring spinal anaesthesia? If they did not, then they are at risk for paralysis. In a patient who presents with a stroke, did the patient forget to take their blood thinner? Knowing there was no blood thinner would mean that patient could be given function preserving clot busting drugs. A quick test that informs physicians that the patient has blood thinner in their blood or not would be a huge advance. We have developed a point-of-care finger-prick blood clotting test kit. It measures the activity of the key factor that makes clots, a result is obtained in under 40 minutes. This activity, and thus our test, is suppressed by the new blood thinners. In a broad population, we need to determine the activity, below which we can be sure that there is blood thinner in the blood. In patients who have stopped a direct acting blood thinner before surgery, we will do the specialized laboratory test and our test. This data will benchmark our test. Globally, each year over 500,000 people on new blood thinners need to stop them for surgery. Completion of this project would move our test kit closer to approval to be in the market. This would improve outcomes for these patients and generate economic benefit for Canada.