New blood test predicts heart attack more accurately

Main Category: Cholesterol
Article Date: 05 Sep 2004 - 12:00 PDT

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A new blood test is able to look at bad cholesterol (LDL) more closely and provide a much more accurate prediction on your chances of having a heart attack, according to recent research.

This new test measures the ratio of bad LDL cholesterol particles (apolipoprotein B molecules) to good HDL particles (apolipoprotein A1 molecules). If you have a ratio of 1 to 2 you are low risk. If, on the other hand, your ratio is 1 to 1 your are high risk. If your ratio goes above 1 to 1 your risk is even higher.

The smaller your LDL particles the more likely blocks of plaque will build up in your system (bad news). The bigger the LDL particles, the more likely they are to being carried away by blood flow (good news).

This large study, monitored 29,000 patients in over 50 countries. 15,000 people who had had a heart attack were compared to a similar number who had not. Comparison's were made between individual people according to age, sex and location.

The researchers said this test is much better than current cholesterol tests in predicting heat attack likelihood. Working out the ratio between LDL and HDL ratios (and size of particles) is a good predictor of heart attack. It seems that the impact of this ratio is bigger than smoking.

A person with the worst ratio results is four times more likely to have a heart attack than a person with the best ratio.

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