Markers of increased cardiovascular risk: are we measuring the most appropriate parameters?

The vital task of evaluating cardiovascular disease risk in individual patients is challenging in light of the ever-growing list of risk factors. Some of the traditional measures of cardiovascular risk, such as blood lipid levels, have been further refined to provide better risk assessments. Certain specific parameters, such as lipoprotein buoyancy, seem to be better predictors of cardiovascular disease than total lipoprotein levels. Furthermore, as the contribution of systemic inflammation to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis is increasingly recognized, several inflammatory markers have become associated with disease risk. Consequently, many studies have attempted to determine the individual merits of these factors in predicting cardiovascular risk.