How Do We Find the Best Biomarkers for Cardiovascular Disease?

Conventional cardiovascular risk assessment is based on traditional risk factors such as serum cholesterol concentrations (cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol) and blood pressure levels. It is becoming increasingly clear that the newer laboratory measures may help to refine risk estimates in the general popu-lation. In a recent publication of theMONICA5 (Mon-itoring of Trends and Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease) investigators (1), Blankenberg and colleagues evaluated the potential contribution of 30 novel bi-omarkers to the 10-year cardiovascular disease risk in 2 population cohorts. These biomarkers were part of the MORGAM (MONICA, Risk, Genetics, Archiving, and Monograph) Biomarker Project and were representa-tive of 9 distinct metabolic processes linked to athero