A study carried out at Mount Sinaí Fuster Heart Hospital in New York in collaboration with the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) in Madrid provides important new information about atherosclerosis, a disease in which lipids (cholesterol) and other substances accumulate in plaques on the arterial wall, causing the vessels to harden and narrow, and increasing the risk of severe cardiovascular conditions. The study, published in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), was led by Dr. Valentín Fuster, Director of the Cardiovascular Institute and Physician-in-Chief at Mount Sinai Medical Center and General Director of the CNIC.
The study shows that both the burden of atherosclerosis and its progression (growth of plaques or the spread of the disease to new arteries) in asymptomatic individuals is independently associated with the risk of death from any cause. Despite advances in cardiovascular research, it has remained unclear if the risk of death from all causes in asymptomatic individuals can be predicted by monitoring the extent and progression of atherosclerosis, especially in the carotid arteries, which supply blood to the brain. The goal of the new study was to determine the independent predictive value of the burden and progression of subclinical atherosclerosis above and beyond prediction based on established cardiovascular risk factors.
The study included 5716 asymptomatic adults with an average age of 69 years (56.7% women) wh.
