CONTEXT The evidence that measurement of the common carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) improves the risk scores in prediction of the absolute risk of cardiovascular events is inconsistent. OBJECTIVE To determine whether common CIMT has added value in 10-year risk prediction of first-time myocardial infarctions or strokes, above that of the Framingham Risk Score. DATA SOURCES Relevant stu...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate whether multiple biomarkers contribute to improved coronary heart disease (CHD) risk prediction in post-menopausal women compared with assessment using traditional risk factors (TRFs) only. BACKGROUND The utility of newer biomarkers remains uncertain when added to predictive models using only TRFs for CHD risk assessment. METHODS The Women...

AIMS Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is a key predictor of chronic disease, particularly cardiovascular disease (CVD), but its assessment usually requires exercise testing which is impractical and costly in most health-care settings. Non-exercise testing cardiorespiratory fitness (NET-F)-estimating methods are a less resource-demanding alternative, but their predictive capacity for CVD and tota...

Background We tested the hypotheses that 1) ejection fraction (EF) assessed by cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) is a stronger predictor of all cause mortality than EF assessed by echocardiography; and 2) CMR with late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) improves risk stratification over echocardiography EF in Cox regression models as determined by net reclassification improvement (NRI). Echocar...

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODSdTwo cohorts of patients with T2DM were investigated. The Gargano Mortality Study (GMS, n = 679 patients) was the training set and the Foggia Mortality Study (FMS, n = 936 patients) represented the validation sample. GMS and FMS cohorts were prospectively followed-up for 7.406 2.15 and 4.516 1.69 years, respectively, and all-cause mortality was registered. A new forwa...

BACKGROUND The Walking Impairment Questionnaire (WIQ) is a subjective measure of patient-reported walking performance developed for peripheral arterial disease. The purpose of this study is to examine whether this simple tool can improve the predictive capacity of established risk models and whether the WIQ can be used in patients without peripheral arterial disease. METHODS AND RESULTS At ba...

There is accruing evidence from general population studies that serum bilirubin and liver enzymes affect blood pressure (BP) and cardiovascular risk, but it is unclear whether these have an impact on hypertensive patients in terms of long-term survival or BP control. We analyzed 12 000 treated hypertensive individuals attending a tertiary care clinic followed up for 35 years for association bet...

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODSdA total of 1,123 T2DM participants, ages 34– 86 years, in the Diabetes Heart Study followed up for an average of 7.4 years were separated using baseline computed tomography scans of CAC (0–9, 10–99, 100–299, 300–999, and $1,000). Logistic regression was performed to examine the association between CAC and CVD mortality adjusting for FRS. Areas under the curve (AUC) w...