A blood test that detects stress and shows when it is damaging the heart has been developed. Many studies have concluded that stress and anxiety are bad for health, bringing greater risk of disease and early death. But there has never been a way to measure the effects of stress clinically.Now scientists in the US have found that the amount of the protein troponin rises in the blood when a person is dangerously stressed.Researchers say measuring troponin levels could be a quick way of identifying people at risk of heart problems, even when they do not appear to have risk factors.Arshed Quyyumi, professor of medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, US, the lead author of the study, said: "We've always believed stress can be harmful to cardiac health. We can now show that this harm is reflected by elevated levels of troponin in the blood. For the first time doctors have a way to measure the effect with a highly sensitive troponin test."Because a higher circulating level of troponin is associated with worse long-term outcomes, such as heart attack, or even death, doctors might eventually use this information to prevent complications from developing."Troponin is released when the heart is damaged and its presence is used as a test for determining if someone has had a heart attack. The more damage there is to the heart, the more troponin there will be in the blood.But the new study shows that troponin levels rise before heart problems have begun and are directly linked to rising stress.To test the link, scientists evaluated 587 patients with heart problems who were asked to take part in mental and physical stress tests. The mental stress test involved speaking in public; the physical test involved exercise. ..