KNOW YOUR NUMBER.Move over cholesterol, triglycerides Triglycerides Fatty compounds synthesized from carbohydrates during the process of digestion and stored in the body's adipose (fat) tissues. High levels of triglycerides in the blood are associated with insulin resistance. , HDL (Hardware Description Language) A language used to describe the functions of an electronic circuit for documentation, simulation or logic synthesis (or all three). Although many proprietary HDLs have been developed, Verilog and VHDL are the major standards. , and LDL LDL - ["LDL: A Logic-Based Data-Language", S. Tsur et al, Proc VLDB 1986, Kyoto Japan, Aug 1986, pp.33-41]. . Now there's yet another number to get checked when you go to the doctor. Highsensitivity C-reactive protein C-Reactive Protein Definition C-reactive protein (CRP) is a protein produced by the liver and found in the blood. Purpose C-reactive protein is not normally found in the blood of healthy people. (hs-CRP), which is a sign of inflammation within the body, can help predict your risk of heart disease, say researchers at Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. It is a prestigious American medical school located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. . Paul Ridker and co-workers collected blood samples from more than 28,000 apparently healthypostmenopausal women. Over the next three years, 122 of the women had a heart attack, stroke, angioplasty, or coronary bypass coronary bypass Surgical treatment for coronary heart disease to relieve angina pectoris and prevent heart attacks. It became widely used in the 1960s. One or more blood vessels—usually an artery in the chest or a vein from the leg—are transplanted to create . Ridker's team then compared blood samples from those women to samples from 244 similar women who had no heart problems. Those who started out with thehighest hs-CRP levels were four times more likely to have heart disease than those with the lowest levels. That was even true for women with desirable LDL ("bad") cholesterol (under 130). High cholesterol levels, says Ridker, "tell us about a person's propensity to develop plaque, but they don't tell us which plaques are likely to rupture." Plaques that rupture lead to heart attacks and strokes, and whether a plaque ruptures depends on inflammation. The bottom line: both men and women should get their high-sensitivity C-reactive protein checked. (A test for ordinary CRP-often done to diagnose arthritis--can't detect inflammation at lowenough levels.) Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs and anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin both help prevent the risk of heart attacks, in part by reducing inflammation. New Eng. J. Med. 342: 836, 2000. |
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