Last updated on 16th Oct 2021 - By Dwayne Michaels

How Abnormal AST SGOT affects heart?

SGOT is found in several areas of your body, including your kidneys, muscles, heart, and brain. If any of these areas are damaged, your SGOT levels may be higher than normal.

For example, the levels could be raised during a heart attack or if youve had a muscle injury. But before proceeding further let us first know a little about AST SGOT.

AST SGOT or Aspartate transaminase SGOT is a blood test that checks for liver damage. When liver cells are damaged, SGOT leaks into the blood stream, raising your blood’s level of this enzyme.

The test may be used to evaluate liver health for people who are already known to have conditions that affect their liver, such as hepatitis C. Often liver damage does not show symptoms for long, and go unnoticed.

In such situations, regular checking for SGOT and SGPT can detect the abnormalities early, and helps in effective management of the disorder.

This is critical especially in patients at high risk of liver disorders, such as people with obesity, diabetes, heavy drinkers, or those taking certain medications causing harm to the liver in the long-term.

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Certain diseases like cirrhosis and hepatitis raise the blood serum SGPT levels, so do specific medications including statin used to lower cholesterol.

AST SGOT is similar to alanine transaminase (ALT) SGPT in that both enzymes are associated with liver parenchymal cells.

The difference is that ALT is found predominantly in the liver, with clinically negligible quantities found in the kidneys, heart, and skeletal muscle, while AST is found in the liver, heart, skeletal muscle, kidneys, brain, and red blood cells.

As a result, ALT is a more specific indicator of liver inflammation than AST, as AST may be elevated also in diseases affecting other organs, such as myocardial infarction, acute pancreatitis, acute hemolytic anemia, severe burns, acute renal disease, musculoskeletal diseases, and trauma.

AST SGOT was defined as a biochemical marker for the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction in the year 1954. However, the use of AST SGOT for such a diagnosis is now redundant and has been superseded by the cardiac troponins.

AST is commonly measured clinically as a part of diagnostic liver function tests, to determine liver health. However, it is important to keep in mind that the source of AST in blood tests may reflect pathology in organs other than the liver.

In fact, when the AST is higher than ALT, a muscle source of these enzymes should be considered. For example, muscle inflammation due to dermatomyositis may cause AST>ALT.

This is a good reminder that AST and ALT are not good measures of liver function because they do not reliably reflect the synthetic ability of the liver and they may come from tissues other than liver.

A high AST level is a sign of liver damage, but it can also mean you have damage to another organ that makes it, like your heart or kidneys. That's why doctors often do the AST test together with tests of other liver enzymes.