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For decades, LDL cholesterol has been the main target in preventive heart health. The American College of Cardiology just started recommending that everyone me
by brandonb 1y ago
For decades, LDL cholesterol has been the main target in preventive heart health.
The American College of Cardiology just started recommending that everyone measure hs-CRP, a blood test for inflammation. Why? Because inflammation now predicts cardiovascular events more accurately than cholesterol — especially in people already on statins or those without traditional risk factors.
In some ways, cholesterol has become a victim of its own success. With routine screening and statins, most heart attack patients now have artificially lowered cholesterol. That leaves the remaining risk hidden in non-traditional biomarkers — beyond the usual SMuRFs (standard modifiable risk factors).
- Night_Thastus 1y agoIs this...a summary? The wording is so close to the article in parts that I'm not sure.
- brandonb 1y agoThis is a summary -- I'm the article author and the author of that comment, so I would hope my wording is consistent. :)
- Night_Thastus 1y agoOh, missed the username. Normally when people post a comment like that they prepend it with something like "Author here, just wanted to add X/Y/Z" I think there's supposed to be some kind of green highlight for comments by the poster but that's missing as well. Mea culpa.
- CleverLikeAnOx 1y agoGreen highlight is for new users.
- Night_Thastus 1y agoOh. They should add a highlight for comments written by the poster as well. Or some kind of [poster] tag, not sure. Would be useful in these cases.
- brandonb 1y agoFair point!
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoThanks for the summary! I haven’t read tfa yet, so my apologies if this is answered in there, but: does this mean that we’ve already reduced the contribution from cholesterol to events? Or that cholesterol was simply associated and not causative? I imagine the truth is somewhere in between, perhaps we can guess that’s it’s 70% due to one and 30% due to the other?
- brandonb 1y agoIt's more the former -- we've gotten so good at detecting high cholesterol and reducing it, that the majority of residual risk is now in the other factors. (There are some people who dispute whether cholesterol is causative, but most cardiologists believe LDL cholesterol, or ApoB, causes heart attacks and strokes --based on both mechanistic evidence and randomized control trials.)
- pigeonhole123 1y agoI'm interested in this subject. Can you cite some of the RCTs and mechanistic evidence?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago1. Thanks for the reply! 2. Having now read the article, i see that my question was indeed already addressed in the article — sorry for asking silly questions 3. Your good-natured, approachable response is great marketing for your company! I’m not the target audience, but I did click through your marketing material, and probably trust it more because of your response.
- SpicyUme 1y agoDoes this mean this test is recommenced in place of cholesterol for people who are not taking statins? Or is the test in addition?