Research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other national organizations has found that doctors may be able to predict a woman’s risk of future heart disease 30 years in advance with a simple blood test.
The results were just published in both the New England Journal of Medicine and the European Society of Cardiology on the last weekend in August. The study looked at 30,000 women with an average age of 55 years, and it measured the levels of certain fats and proteins in the blood to screen for markers of potential heart disease.
The two fats measured were cholesterol and lipoprotein, but the standout marker measured is called C-reactive protein (hsCRP). That is not surprising, as hsCRP is one of the elements of the blood doctors look for in the blood when trying to determine if a patient is having a heart attack, or had had one recently. Elevated levels in that case indicate damage to the heart muscle.
A “heart attack” is not what many people believe it is. The most common mistaken notion is the idea that a heart attack means “the heart suddenly stopped beating.” That is not what it means; when the heart stops, it is called “cardiac arrest.”
A heart attack is when the heart, which is a muscle, is deprived of blood and begins to die as a result of oxygen starvation. This usually happens because blood vessels in the heart—called coronary arteries—narrow over time due to the build-up of plaque along the inside of the arteries. Once the vessel narrows enough, it stops enough blood—sometimes stopping all blood flow through that vessel—to start killing the heart. Evidence of this can often be seen in elevated C-reactive protein levels in blood tests.
This study monitored the cohort of 30,000 women over a 30–year period beginning in 1993. The researchers said that learning the levels of “all three” components, the two fats and one protein, allowed them to make accurate risk predictions for heart disease at 20 or 30 years before problems occur. This allows doctors to individualize their treatment based on the patient, rather than on general population-wide statistics, according to researchers.
All three components give some indication of risk, but C-reactive protein turned out to be the most important to measure. The liver makes this protein in response to inflammation in the body, which serves as a fairly accurate proxy measurement for heart attack risk.
