| ■ New Test Recommended to Determine Cardiovascular Disease Risk | 2008.03.31 |
| The way doctors treat patients at risk for cardiovascular disease may change after Friday's release of new guidelines from the American Diabetes Association and the American College of Cardiology. The guidelines say an additional test should be added to the standard cholesterol test used to determine cardiovascular disease risk. The guidelines endorse the use of advanced lipoprotein testing by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) as a more accurate method to determine risk and to check whether LDL ("bad") cholesterol-lowering therapies are having an effect in patients. NMR lipoprotein testing measures the number of LDL particles, which carry cholesterol through the body, rather than cholesterol levels alone. Studies have shown that it's the number of lipoprotein particles present in the blood, not the amount of cholesterol carried by these particles, that form blockages inside arteries. |