New heart disease markers no better than old study

BOSTON, Dec 21 (Reuters) Sophisticated screening tests are no better at predicting life-threatening heart problems than simple old-fashioned risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, a study showed.

Thomas Wang of the Massachusetts General Hospital and his colleagues looked at ten ''biomarkers'' that try to evaluate risk for heart disease, including C-reactive protein and homocysteine.

Their conclusion to be published in today's New England Journal of Medicine: don't bother.

''The traditional risk factors that have stood the test of time turn out to be the best evaluation of risk,'' Mr Wang told Reuters yesterday.

He said some of the tests have other functions in medicine and might help doctors better understand heart disease.

But when it comes to using them to routinely test patients to assess their risk, ''there doesn't seem to be a role for keeping these biomarkers,'' he said.

The conclusion is based on the longtime Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts in which 3,209 participants were followed for up to ten years to see if any of the markers could foretell who would have a heart attack, stroke, or heart failure.

They also looked at deaths from any cause.

The right combination of biomarkers made it a little easier to predict who was at risk, but they ''did not add a lot,'' Mr Wang said. ''The purpose of the study was not to bash biomarkers,'' he added. ''What we have is not enough of them, and they need to be better.'' REUTERS DKA RK0840