Diagnosing a patient’s risk for a risky heart condition just got a bit more cutting edge.

The journal Stress has a study showing that cortisol levels found in a hair test could serve as a diagnostic marker for heart attack risk. The researchers compared hair strands of 56 men recently hospitalized after a heart attack to samples from 56 men hospitalized for other reasons. After controlling for other factors like high blood pressure and smoking, a higher level of cortisol in the hair sample was the strongest predictor of which patients were admitted for a myocardial infarction.

A distinct advantage of hair analysis is that it offers a long-term portrait of cortisol levels. The hair strands used by the researchers in the Stress paper represented three months’ worth of cortisol levels, whereas blood and urine tests only provide evidence for the cortisol levels at the time of the test.

Hair analyses are already used by many employers to screen their employees for signs of drug and alcohol use.

They’re also used in forensic analysis to find traces of toxic substances, either from drug overdose or poisoning.

Image by xJasonRogersx via Flickr Creative Commons