[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.

[Cardiovascular risk as assessed by traditional risk factors].

Although traditional cardiovascular risk factors play a proven aetiologic role in atherosclerosis-related cardiovascular disease, they fail to predict the occurrence of future clinical events, and, taken separately, they provide useful therapeutic target rather than diagnostic tools. Apart from the situation of severe monorisk, more frequent is the presentation of one individual with numerous moderate risk factors, the resulting global risk of whom being estimated by risk scores, such as the Framingham risk score or its derivatives. These models suffer various limitations, including the lack of applicability depending on geographic zones, and the lack of discrimination in the intermediate risk category, as compared to a better predictive value in the low risk and high risk categories.