Cardiovascular Risk Prediction: Beyond the Established Risk Factors

Of the many proposed strategies to improve upon established factors for stratification of cardiovascular risk, those that incorporate plasma biomarkers are more attractive to clinicians than those that incorporate cardiovascular imaging. However, models that included various biomarkers have gained only modest improvements (Journal Watch Cardiology Dec 20 2006 and May 6 2005). Now, investigators in Sweden have used data from the Uppsala Longitudinal Study of Adult Men, a community-based cohort of 1135 white men (mean age at baseline, 71), to evaluate the incremental advantage of adding a combination of biomarkers — reflecting myocardial cell damage (troponin I), LV dysfunction (N-terminal pro–brain natriuretic peptide), renal failure (cystat…