Word: ridker
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...molecules, such as C-reactive protein (CRP), indicate a runaway inflammatory process and are better predictors of heart attacks than cholesterol.) Could the same be true for diabetes? "In 2001, when we published our first paper on inflammation and diabetes, everybody thought we were just wrong," recalls Dr. Paul Ridker, a cardiologist at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. "Now there are half a dozen studies confirming that if you measure markers of inflammation, and CRP in particular, you can do a good job of predicting who's going to get diabetes...
...study, led by Dr. Paul Ridker, director of the hospital's center for cardiovascular-disease prevention, is likely to be the talk of the annual meeting of the American Heart Association this week in Chicago. Not only does it provide the strongest evidence to date that inflammation plays a key role in heart disease, but it also supports the growing suspicion among medical researchers that inflammation is a major culprit behind a wide range of disorders, including cancer...
...reactive protein, is a substance manufactured by the liver in response to the immune system's alarms. It can easily be picked up in the blood and provides a convenient measure of how inflamed the heart arteries may be. Ridker's team, which pioneered the study of CRP's role in heart disease, tracked the levels of both CRP and LDL ("bad" cholesterol) in nearly 28,000 women for eight years. They found that women with high levels of CRP were twice as likely to have heart disease as those with high LDL, and that many women who later suffered...
...choice proved fortunate. Just this summer, Ridker's group published the results of its landmark studies. As expected, patients with high CRP levels were at significantly higher risk of developing a heart attack. Even more intriguing, Ridker's team found that those with low cholesterol but high CRP were just as likely to have a heart attack as those with high cholesterol and low CRP. Ridker even showed that statins, the most popular cholesterol-lowering drugs, reduce CRP levels by equal amounts--about 13%--in both groups, suggesting that the medications pack a double wallop, working as both cholesterol-lowering...
Already, physicians around the U.S. have begun screening their heart patients for CRP. If Ridker has his way, that number will continue to grow, and CRP testing will become as ubiquitous as cholesterol screening--and as important in saving lives...