Biomarkers in primary prevention : Meaningful diagnosis based on biomarker scores?

Cardiovascular (CV) risk assessment is based on the utilization of risk scores, enabling clinicians to estimate an individual's risk to develop CV pathologies and events. Such risk scores comprise classic CV risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, hypertension, and blood cholesterol levels. Recently, other CV biomarkers such as cardiac troponins have been suggested and evaluated as alternative biomarkers not only in the acute diagnostic setting of myocardial infarction, but also as markers for risk stratification in the general population. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge on biomarkers in the field of primary prevention in cardiovascular disease (CVD). Furthermore, we present potential alternative biomarker-based strategies for CV risk assessment. In this respect we provide an outlook on the potential use of genomic variation as well as circulating non-coding RNAs to complement current risk assessment strategies so as to further personalize risk stratification in CVD.