Study after study has shown that high blood levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation, are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. But what hasn’t been clear is whether CRP actually causes heart disease, or just indicates the presence of artery-blocking atherosclerosis.
Researchers from Imperial College London set out to answer this question [...]

Tags: atherosclerosis, CRP, heart disease, JUPITER

Genome-wide association studies, the research projects that connect SNPs to different traits and conditions (and fuel much of the 23andMe Health and Traits feature), focus on fairly common genetic variations that generally have small effects on risk.
But critics of this type of research charge that studying common variation is of little value because it misses [...]

Tags: Amish, APOC3, HDL, heart disease, LDL, lipids, triglycerides