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Heart ailments have become a common problem over the recent years, most especially in developed countries. Unfortunately, most people find out they have heart problems when it’s already too late—particularly after they’ve already suffered from a heart attack. But this new development by The University of Texas at Austin could really improve save people in the nick of time. And yes, it only needs saliva.

The technology entails smearing saliva onto a credit-card-sized nano-bio-chip, which is then inserted into an accompanying analyzer. Within just 15 minutes, the results could be seen. The test could pinpoint if someone has a heart ailment and needs to get medical help soon, or even predict if a person has a high risk to have a heart attack.

While this wouldn’t be thought of a mere decade ago, the recent identification of blood serum proteins which are directly related to heart diseases made this possible. Basically, some of these proteins could also be found in human saliva, all the scientists had to do was find a way to take advantage of that. As with any new development in medical science, it’ll take some time before this technology gets out of the clinical stage process. So until then (and even BY then), take good care of your hearts!

Source: University of Texas at Austin