Coronary disease & ACSDiagnostic or prognostic study
Plasma infrared molecular fingerprinting stratifies residual risk in coronary artery disease and reflects clonal haematopoiesis-associated biology
- Prognostic cohort study with external validation
- discovery cohort
- external validation in three independent cohorts
Authors' conclusion
Plasma IMF provides rapid, low-cost, sequencing-free assessment of residual mortality risk in CAD, outperforming guideline-based scores while reflecting CHIP-associated biology.
Study context
- Population
- Patients with angiographically confirmed coronary artery disease (CAD) (mean age 73 years, 76% male), followed for up to 10.7 yearsdiscovery cohort
- Participants
- 1,341 patients
- Comparison
- Infrared molecular fingerprinting (IMF)+Age vs SMART2 score
- Outcome
- Mortality discrimination (C-index)
Performance
As reported in the abstract
Mortality discrimination
IMF+Age
0.79
C-index
SMART2
0.74
C-index
P < 0.01
Further findings
Mortality by IMF-derived risk strata · separation of Kaplan-Meier survival curves
P < 0.001
Decision curve analysis
- Greater net benefit across clinical thresholds
Clonal haematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) carriers by risk stratum
- Higher-risk strata enriched for CHIP carriers, particularly spliceosome mutations
External validation (PRECAD2, KORA, Lasers4Life)
- Reproduced expected risk patterns and comorbidity associations
- PRECAD2 474, KORA 3044, Lasers4Life 2123 individuals
Original publication
Plasma infrared molecular fingerprinting stratifies residual risk in coronary artery disease and reflects clonal haematopoiesis-associated biology. Eur Heart J. Published 29 July 2026. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehag587
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it