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Common disease of the arteries in which patches (plaques) consisting mostly of cholesterol and other lipids form on the inner arterial wall. The effect of these deposits is that the vessels become rigid and narrowed, leading to a reduced flow of blood. Narrowing of arteries in different parts of the body leads to different problems. If arteries in...
The risk of having a heart attack or stroke increases with factors such as raised cholesterol, raised blood pressure, increased weight, smoking and taking little exercise, but the risk becomes less related to these factors with increasing age. Newer lab tests that are are linked to heart attacks, including homocysteine which is an amino acid present in blood, have recently been shown to add very little to the calculation of risk in people aged up to about 80.Research workers from Leiden University in the Netherlands have carried out a small study of risk factors in very old people. Their subjects were 302 residents of Leiden who were 85 at the start of the five year study and who had no history of heart disease. They found that at this age conventional risk assessment no longer accurately predicted death. In contrast, plasma homocysteine on its own identified those at high risk of dying from heart attack or stroke. The authors suggest that their findings warrant checking in further groups of the very old because, if confirmed, homocysteine alone could be used to select old people for preventive treatment.