BACKGROUND Cardiorespiratory fitness (fitness) is associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality. However, the extent to which fitness improves risk classification when added to traditional risk factors is unclear. METHODS AND RESULTS Fitness was measured by the Balke protocol in 66 371 subjects without prior CVD enrolled in the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study between 1970 and 2006; ...

BACKGROUND Reproductive factors provide an early window into a woman's coronary heart disease (CHD) risk; however, their contribution to CHD risk stratification is uncertain. METHODS AND RESULTS In the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study, we constructed Cox proportional hazards models for CHD including age, pregnancy status, number of live births, age at menarche, menstrual irregula...

We thank Dr. Stern (1) for his interest in our work (2). We agree that risk distribution curves are a valuable addition in the assessment of risk prediction models, particularly in the interpretation of reclassification measures. Two identical risk distribution curves that differ in location reflect models with different calibration, and 2 risk distribution curves that differ in dispersion refl...

OBJECTIVE To simultaneously evaluate 14 biomarkers from distinct biological pathways for risk prediction of ischemic stroke, including biomarkers of hemostasis, inflammation, and endothelial activation as well as chemokines and adipocytokines. METHODS AND RESULTS The Prospective Epidemiological Study on Myocardial Infarction (PRIME) is a cohort of 9771 healthy men 50 to 59 years of age who we...

BACKGROUND The relationship of circulating levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP) with cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, particularly with consideration of effects at intermediate levels of risk, has not been fully assessed. METHODS AND RESULTS Among 3006 offspring participants in the Framingham Heart Study free of CVD (mean age, 46 years at baseline), there were 129 hard corona...

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 ...

BACKGROUND Vascular adhesion protein-1 (VAP-1) associates to subclinical atherosclerotic manifestations in young people, but its association to incident major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) and cardiovascular mortality in a general population is not known. METHODS AND RESULTS We used a newly developed ELISA to measure soluble VAP-1 (sVAP-1) levels in 2775 participants (mean age, 60 yea...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Our recently proposed point scoring model includes the widely-used Spetzler-Martin (SM)-5 variables, along with age, unruptured presentation, and diffuse border (SM-Supp). Here we evaluate the SM-Supp model performance compared with SM-5, SM-3, and Toronto prediction models using net reclassification index, which quantifies the correct movement in risk reclassification, a...