Elevated lipoprotein(a), despite a coronary artery calcium score of 0, could portend coronary plaque burden and may be a potential marker for early atherosclerosis intervention, researchers reported.
The results of a community-level evaluation of the impact of Lp(a) on coronary plaque in asymptomatic individuals were published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging.
“The idea was to see, in those patients who actually had disease, what we can discover might be evidence of contributors so we can better prevent cardiac events,” Jonathan Fialkow, MD, FACC, FAHA, deputy director of clinical cardiology at Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida, told Healio. “Quite frankly, a large percentage of people who have heart attacks don’t have those risk factors. So how can we be better and more precise in finding what would be easily and simply measured to stratify a person to say, ‘you may or may not be at a higher risk of a heart attack,’ so then you can do things to lower your risk.
