Will there be a new blood marker for assessing heart disease risk in use soon? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Do you ever feel confused about cholesterol and triglyceride levels? LDL, HDL, VLDL- it’s a bit challenging to figure them out and what they might mean for heart disease risk. Now a recent study suggests that another blood marker, known as apolipoprotein B, could be one size fits all. Seth Martin, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, explains.

Martin: Apo B is a very strong lipid marker. It’s something that has been used in many studies and is strongly associated with risk for coronary heart disease and for cardiovascular disease more broadly. It basically represents the concentration of bad lipid particles because there’s one apolipoprotein B  per bad particle. In most people 90% plus of those bad particles are LDL particles. In most people they give the same answer.  :32

Martin says right now apo B is a little more difficult for clinical laboratories to measure, so stay tuned. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.