Biomarcatori di rischio cardiovascolare

Despite enormous therapeutic advances, cardiovascular disease remains a global public health problem. There is substantial interest in identifying new risk factors, to improve our understanding of disease biology and to account for the cases of heart disease that cannot be explained by known risk factors (smoking, diabetes, hypertension, obesity and history of coronary heart disease). Investigation of putative risk factors frequently involves the study of circulating biomarkers. Prior to the transfer from bench to bedside, these cardiovascular risk biomarkers have to meet the following requirements: 1) Can the clinician measure the biomarker?; 2) Does the biomarker add new information?; 3) Will the biomarker help the clinician manage patients? Until now, only few biomarkers have satisfactorily fulfilled these requirements.