[New biomarkers for cardiovascular risk evaluation].

Biomarkers aim at refining risk prediction and at better identifying individuals at high cardiovascular risk. To be recommended in clinical practice, a novel biomarker should be simple to measure, non-invasive, cost-effective, reproducible, and should provide a predictive and discriminative value independently of, and beyond existing risk scores. In addition, it should offer a favourable impact on morbidity, mortality and disability of the disease. Among the hundreds of candidate circulating biomarkers, certain have shown solid statistical associations with the incidence of future events, as is the case for high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. However, contrary to subclinical atherosclerosis assessment, they offer only a modest increase in the predictive value of current scores. To date, the main interest of cardiovascular biomarkers in primary prevention is to better understand pathophysiological mechanisms of atherosclerosis in the research setting.