United States: A new report suggested that the risk of heart disease in the future to women could be easily predicted by a simple blood test for three factors.
More about the finding
As a study that appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine on Saturday and was also presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress over the weekend.
About the study
The research was conducted on 30,000 women, with an average age of fifty-five years, who were assigned their blood for one measurement in 1993, in which their two types of fat in the bloodstream and one type of protein were taken into account. Their health updates were followed up for thirty years, explained the researchers.
According to Dr. Paul Ridker, the study lead author and director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, “The strongest predictor of risk was a simple blood measure of inflammation known as high sensitivity C-reactive protein, or hsCRP, followed by cholesterol and lipoprotein(a),” as aol.com reported.
He noted “Getting to know about all three predicted risks not just at five or 10 years, but at twenty and thirty years, gives us a road map for how to target specific therapies for the individual patient, rather than an overly simple ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.”
As per the reports, increased concentrations of protein signal an increased risk of heart disease.
Low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol, or what is referred to as “bad” cholesterol, can form plaque in the arteries and increase the possibility of a heart attack or a stroke, according to the Mayo Clinic.
More about the research findings
According to the researchers, women with the highest levels of LDL cholesterol were found to have a 36 percent higher associated risk of heart disease compared with the lowest.
People with Lp(a) levels above the top quintile had a 33 percent increased risk, according to the study. The elevated CRP levels signaled the highest associated risk for women at 70 percent.
For the three measures, the women with the highest levels were 1Ā½ times more likely to have a stroke and more than three times as likely to develop coronary heart disease, as the researchers learned.
Experts comment
Ridker highlighted how although most doctors determine cholesterol levels, all doctors determine hsCRP and Lp(a) rarely.
According to Ridker, “It is a truism of medicine that doctors will not treat what they do not measure.”
The researcher also pointed out that a single combination blood test has been able to predict risk thirty years later is “astonishing,” as aol.com reported.
Moreover, he said, “It tells us how much silent risk we simply are unaware of and gives us an opportunity to start preventive efforts far earlier in life.”
Moreover, according to Dr. Marc Siegel, senior medical analyst for Fox News and clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, it is a “big step forward.”
“This is a large, convincing study that puts together three predictive blood tests that haven’t been looked at in this way before,” Siegel said, as per Fox News Digital.
“Since inflammation can cause heart attacks, it is confirmatory that an elevated inflammation marker (CRP) conveys a 70% increased risk for heart disease,” he continued.
“LDL and Lp(a) have both previously shown an increased risk of heart disease,” he added.