Lippitor bs is also the greatest waste of money.
Lipp for life= BS.
Test your CRP! a $10 test,which can help predict trouble in the 50% of people who have heart attacks without a cholesterol component.
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google.com
Brigham and Women's hospital CRP
brighamandwomens.org
Better Way to Predict Heart Attacks Found (Inexpensive, high-sensitivity protein test may identify patients once considered at low risk)
Article # 17142
In a new study that may change the way physicians screen patients for heart attack risk, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that high-sensitivity testing for C-reactive protein – a blood marker for arterial inflammation – greatly improves the ability of standard cholesterol screening to identify individuals at high risk for heart attacks. Additionally, the new, inexpensive high-sensitivity C-reactive protein test (hs-CRP) also was found capable of predicting future heart attacks even among individuals with normal cholesterol levels. The findings are published in the March 23rd issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. “Cholesterol screening is currently the standard for predicting heart attack risk, yet nearly half of all heart attacks occur among individuals with normal cholesterol levels,” said study lead-author Paul Ridker, MD, a cardiologist and researcher at BWH. “What our data demonstrate is that a simple marker of inflammation, hs-CRP, is a very potent predictor of risk which seems to tell us a great deal more than cholesterol testing.” Dr. Ridker’s group evaluated blood samples from BWH’s landmark Women’s Health Study, and directly compared the predictive value of twelve different risk markers including hs-CRP, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, homocysteine, and lipoprotein (a). The researchers found that apparently healthy women with the highest levels of hs-CRP had more than a four-fold increase in risk of suffering a future cardiovascular event compared to women with lower levels of the blood marker. This effect was present even among individuals with cholesterol levels considered “safe” according to national cholesterol screening guidelines. Of the twelve markers evaluated, hs-CRP was the single strongest and most significant predictor of risk. In fact, the magnitude of risk associated with hs-CRP was almost twice that associated with LDL cholesterol, the standard used by most physicians to determine risk of cardiovascular disease. “Inflammation is now understood to play a critical role in atherosclerosis and in the conversion of a stable cholesterol plaque into a worrisome, unstable lesion,” explained Dr. Ridker. “Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States, so if we can improve a physician’s ability to predict heart attacks, we may be able to save many lives through more aggressive and better targeted prevention programs.” The Food and Drug Administration approved the first hs-CRP test for use in cardiovascular disease prediction in November 1999. Dr. Nader Rifai, a clinical pathologist at Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the current study cautioned that not all tests for CRP are capable of accurately detecting heart attack risk: “Physicians who wish to use this new approach to screening must use an accurate high-sensitivity test for CRP, not one of the older assays which are far less reliable.” “While the mechanism by which C-reactive protein predicts risk remains uncertain, a leading hypothesis is that individuals with an enhanced inflammatory response, and hence elevated levels of hs-CRP, represent a group at high risk for rupturing cholesterol laden plaques within the arterial wall,” said Dr. Ridker. “These data also have implications for the prescription of statin drugs to prevent first-ever heart attacks,” noted Dr. Ridker. Clinical trials have shown statin drugs to be highly effective in reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke, even among individuals without known cardiovascular disease. However, because of the large number of patients who would require treatment, the use of these agents for preventing first heart attacks has been limited. “The use of combined hs-CRP and cholesterol testing may provide a simple method to determine who in an apparently healthy population is most likely to benefit from statin therapy,” said Dr. Ridker. Research from BWH presented last year has shown that the cholesterol-lowering drug, pravastatin, also reduces levels of hs-CRP. “The possibility that statin drugs reduce inflammation is exciting from a biologic point of view,” added Dr. Ridker. “We are in an era which is moving beyond cholesterol to better understand, treat, and prevent cardiovascular disease.” The study was supported by grants from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute and by an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association. BWH is a 716-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare System, an integrated health care delivery network. Internationally recognized as a leading academic health care institution, BWH is committed to excellence in patient care, medical research, and the training and education of health care professionals. The hospital’s preeminence in all aspects of clinical care is coupled with its strength in medical research. A leading recipient of research grants from the National Institutes of Health, BWH conducts internationally acclaimed clinical, basic and epidemiological studies.
What is the normal range of hs-CRP level?
If hs-CRP level is lower than 1.0 mg/L, a person has a low risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
If hs-CRP is between 1.0 and 3.0 mg/L, a person has an average risk.
If hs-CRP is higher than 3.0 mg/L, a person is at high risk.
If, after repeated testing, patients have persistently unexplained, markedly elevated hs-CRP (greater than 10.0 mg/L), they should be evaluated to exclude noncardiovascular causes. Patients with autoimmune diseases or cancer, as well as other infectious diseases, may also have elevated CRP levels.
content.nejm.org
Conclusions These data suggest that the C-reactive protein level is a stronger predictor of cardiovascular events than the LDL cholesterol level and that it adds prognostic information to that conveyed by the Framingham risk score.
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