Assessing an individual’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease is essential for prevention.
Traditional risk markers, such as blood pressure and cholesterol, are not always accurate measures for predicting heart disease at the individual level.
Researchers are exploring new risk markers such as the coronary artery calcium score and the polygenic risk score.
A new study suggests that adding the coronary artery calcium score, as opposed to the polygenic risk score, to traditional risk markers can help doctors assess individual coronary heart disease risk more accurately in middle-aged and older adults.
On average, someone in the United States dies of cardiovascular disease (CVD) every 34 secondsTrusted Source.
Yet the World Health Organization (WHO)Trusted Source estimates that over 75% of early cardiovascular disease cases are preventableTrusted Source.
To minimize the risk of heart disease, it’s important for doctors to assess an individual’s risk factors, particularly for coronary heart disease (CHD). This is done using risk models that take into account various factors, including age, sex, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, diabetes status, and smoking status.
Earlier this year, the 20-year results of the Heinz Nixdorf Recall (HNR) study showed that individual risk prediction is improved by the addition of coronary artery calcification to the traditional risk score. However, no studies to date have directly compared coronary artery calcium and polygenic risk scores in the same cohort.
To address this knowledge gap, researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine analyzed data on both risk scores from two cohorts of middle-aged to older adults from the United States and the Netherlands.
They compared the change in coronary heart disease risk prediction when a coronary artery calcium score, a polygenic risk score, or both were added to a traditional risk factor-based model.
The findings were published in JAMATrusted Source on May 23.
Risk markers for coronary heart disease
Risk models help doctors to determine whether treatments like lipid-lowering therapy or lowering blood pressure are necessary based on the level of cardiovascular disease risk.
But these conventional risk scores do not always provide accurate estimates and new risk markers for coronary heart disease are being explored.
One such marker is coronary artery calcium (calcium plaque in the walls of coronary arteries), which is a strong predictor of future coronary heart disease and can be detected using computed tomography (CT) scans.
In addition, researchTrusted Source has shown that genetics play an important role in the development of coronary heart disease.
Another approach for determining a person’s risk of developing the condition is the use of polygenic risk scores, which calculate coronary heart disease risk based on a person’s genes.
Credit to: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com
