BACKGROUND Mortality among patients with heart failure is high. Though individual biomarkers have been investigated to determine their value in mortality risk prediction, the role of a multimarker strategy requires further evaluation. METHODS AND RESULTS Olmsted County residents presenting with heart failure from July 2004 to September 2007 were recruited to undergo biomarker measurement. We ...

BACKGROUND Variations in longitudinal deformation of the left ventricle have been suggested to be useful for differentiating chronic constrictive pericarditis (CP) and restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM). We assessed left ventricular mechanics derived from cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) cine-based and 2-dimensional echocardiography-based tissue tracking to determine intermodality consistency of ...

Blood pressure (BP) variability is associated with stroke risk, but less is known about subclinical cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). We aimed to determine whether CSVD relates to short-term BP variability independently of BP levels and also, whether they improve CSVD discrimination beyond clinical variables and office BP levels. This was a cohort study on asymptomatic hypertensives who und...

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODSdParticipants were drawn from representative samples of adults living in England and Scotland. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to relate baseline plasma CRP with all-cause and CVD mortality during follow-up in men and women with and without diabetes. The added value of CRP to the predictions was assessed through c-statistic comparison and relative...

BACKGROUND Carotid artery plaques are associated with coronary artery atherosclerotic lesions. We evaluated various ultrasound definitions of carotid artery plaque as predictors of future cardiovascular disease (CVD) and coronary heart disease (CHD) events. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied the risk factors and ultrasound measurements of the carotid arteries at baseline of 6562 members (mean age...

UNLABELLED Our aim is to determine the optimal time schedule for home blood pressure (BP) monitoring that best predicts stroke and coronary artery disease in general practice. The Japan Morning Surge-Home Blood Pressure (J-HOP) study is a nationwide practice-based study that included 4310 Japanese with a history of or risk factors for cardiovascular disease, or both (mean age, 65 years; 79% use...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE American Indians have high rates of stroke. Improved risk stratification could enhance prevention, but the ability of biochemical and echocardiographic markers of preclinical disease to improve stroke prediction is not well-defined. METHODS We evaluated such markers as predictors of ischemic stroke in a community-based cohort of American Indians without prevalent cardio...

PURPOSE In light of widespread interest in the prognostic value of biomarkers, we apply three discrimination measures to evaluate the incremental value of biomarkers--beyond self-reported measures--for predicting all-cause mortality. We assess whether all three measures--area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve, continuous net reclassification improvement, and integrated discrimin...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to validate the Korean Genome Epidemiology Study (KoGES) risk score to predict the 4-year risk of hypertension (HT) in a large nationwide sample, and compare its discrimination and calibration with the Framingham and blood pressure (BP)-only models. METHODSANDRESULTS This study analyzed 69,918 subjects without HT at baseline from the National Sample Cohort in the N...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Even in patients with high-grade carotid stenosis, cardiovascular morbidity causes more deaths than strokes do. Despite successful low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol lowering, a significant risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease remains, eventually rendering other lipid or lipoprotein ratios more efficient treatment targets. This study aimed to investigate ...