Researchers at UMC Utrecht are working on a blood test intended to catch a heart condition that current examinations frequently miss in women, the hospital announced in a news release published on 9 September. The project, called REVEAL-CMD, is one of the teams funded through Wellcome Leap's international VISIBLE program.

The condition in question is coronary microvascular dysfunction, or CMD, which affects the heart's smallest blood vessels rather than the larger coronary arteries that standard cardiac imaging is built to check. According to UMC Utrecht, CMD is a major cause of ANOCA — angina with no obstructive coronary arteries — meaning patients have real chest pain, shortness of breath and fatigue even though their main arteries look normal on a scan. Because the problem sits in vessels too small to see on routine tests, many affected women leave the hospital without a diagnosis despite having genuine heart disease.

According to UMC Utrecht, diagnosing CMD often involves an invasive coronary function test: a catheter is threaded into the heart and medication is used to deliberately trigger the patient's symptoms so doctors can measure the vessels' response. Tim Sakkers, a postdoctoral researcher on the project, described the current approach to UMC Utrecht as "invasive, expensive, painful and only limitedly available".

The REVEAL-CMD team wants to replace that procedure, or at least the need for it in most cases, with a blood sample. University lecturer Ernest Diez Benavente explained the underlying idea: "One blood sample can measure millions of biological characteristics." The project will use artificial intelligence to search that data for patterns that predict CMD and, UMC Utrecht says, to help distinguish between different variants of the condition so treatment can be better targeted. The clinical side of the work is led by Tim van de Hoef, an interventional cardiologist who treats CMD patients, alongside Hester den Ruijter, professor of cardiovascular disease in women.

The funding comes from Wellcome Leap's VISIBLE program, which UMC Utrecht says is distributing $55 million across twelve international research teams working on diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease in women. Wellcome Leap's own program page, jointly backed by Pivotal with support from the British Heart Foundation, states the program's ambition is to lift the share of women with this kind of chest pain who receive an effective diagnosis and treatment from under 1 percent today to more than 80 percent, without increasing the risk of missing a more dangerous, artery-blocking form of heart disease.

UMC Utrecht has not given a date for when a validated test might reach patients. The hospital frames the funding as the start of a multi-year international collaboration rather than a finished product, and Wellcome Leap's program runs on a three-year project cycle. DUIC also reported on the Utrecht team's work this week.

What the announcement does establish is a concrete local stake in a global effort: an Utrecht research group, working with an international consortium and money, on a diagnostic gap that has left large numbers of women with a real heart condition and no clear answer for years at a time.