British and American prevention guidelines: different committees, same science, considerable agreement

recommendations for the prevention of car-diovascular disease (JBS3) ” are built on a comprehensive synthesis of a vast cardiovas-cular disease (CVD) prevention literature.1 The document, with over 400 references, covers topics addressing alternative approaches to risk assessment, including lifetime and short term risk, age based risk, potential use of newer imaging techniques for risk assessment, circulating biomarkers, genomic contributions to risk, and a multi-tude of approaches to risk reduction treat-ments. The JBS3 is closely linked to a draft document2 containing nearly 300 refer-ences and numerous data summaries on cardiovascular risk assessment and modifi-cation of blood lipids for the primary and secondary prevention of CVD from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). In these two docu-ments, nearly every important topic relating to cardiovascular risk and treatment is addressed. It is obvious that great care and thought went into the preparation of these important documents, and they deserve attention and careful study by primary care physicians, cardiovascular specialists, behav-iour change experts, and prevention scien-tists worldwide. The new British guidelines, published only 4 months after the release of th