Prediction of clinical outcomes of ST-elevated myocardial infarction patients using atmospheric solids analysis probe mass spectrometry and machine learning

<i>Introduction</i>: Analysis of small molecule metabolites found in blood plasma of patients undergoing treatment for STEMI has the potential to be used as a clinical diagnostic and prognostic tool, capable of predicting disease progression, risk of negative outcomes, and response to treatment. <i>Methods</i>: Rapid mass spectrometry has been used to measure the metabolite profiles of coronary aspirate blood plasma from 288 STEMI patients enrolled in the Oxford Acute Myocardial Infarction (OxAMI) study. Supervised machine learning applied to the mass spectra was used to stratify patients based on clinically relevant variables related to health and treatment response. <i>Results</i>: In this small proof-of-concept study, patient mortality and microvascular obstruction (MVO) were predicted with over 80% accuracy; heart failure diagnosis, ischemic time, peak troponin, and thrombus score were predicted with over 76% accuracy, and creatinine and index of microcirculatory resistance (IMR) were predicted with over 70% accuracy. Using feature-reduction methods, we were able to identify key mass-to-charge (<i>m</i>/<i>z</i>) peaks in the mass spectra that correlated with the assignment to particular patent groups. These may potentially be used in the future as mass spectrometric biomarkers in the development of a diagnostic and prognostic test for STEMI risk.