Brief Review - Emerging Cardiac Biomarkers as Screening Tool for Atherosclerosis

Apart from the use of cardiac biomarker for diagnosing and monitoring Acute ischemic disease, an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and Heart failure, the same biomarkers can also be used for predicting the chances of suffering from these diseases in future. In a way these can be used as screening biomarkers. Since the biomarkers, which are intracellular biomolecules, are released in to the peripheral circulation from necrosis of myocytes. Lipids and lipoproteins do have high value in assessing the risk of future cardiac disease, but are not produced by the heart and don't directly reflect the status of the heart, rather they simply provide a measurement of future risk of atherosclerosis. Cardiac biomarkers on the other hand can also provide or help in assesing the extent of damage that has been caused to the myocardium because of their specificity and rapid release or increase in the peripheral blood post injury to the myocardium, as well as their presence in plasma in low concentrations normally. Hence other than the classic cardiovascular risk markers like LDL-C, HDL-C, and triglycerides, presence in abnormal amounts of the emerging markers like apolipoprotein A1/apolipoprotein B100, Lp(a), oxidized LDL, LpPLA2, hsCRP, homocysteine, myeloperoxidase and as well as lipoprotein particle size and concentration can indicate, as well as predict myocardial stress more accurately. The probability of developing a cardiac disease is higher if a particular risk marker is in abnormal amounts. This, in no way means that the individual is certain to develop cardiac disease but is most likely to get the disease.