FRIDAY, Dec. 12, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- A new risk factor that helps doctors identify overweight people at high risk for heart disease has been discovered by Italian researchers.
They report their finding in this week's issue of the journal BMC Cardiovascular Disorders.
The researchers found people who suffer from heart disease are more likely to produce smaller versions of a protein called apolipoprotein, which is the protein component of low-density lipoprotein. Apolipoprotein comes in many different sizes. The largest has a molecular weight nearly three times as great as the smallest.
The study included 715 outpatients who were split into four groups, depending on whether or not they suffered from heart disease and whether or not they were clinically overweight. Blood samples were taken from the patients and analyzed.
The researchers concluded that overweight people with heart disease were more likely to produce a version of apolipoprotein with a low molecular weight than overweight people with no history of heart disease.
"The presence of at least one low molecular weight version of apolipoprotein is a reliable way of discriminating between overweight subjects with a high risk of heart disease and those without," the researchers write.
They also found that normal weight people with heart disease were more likely to produce low-molecular weight versions of apolipoprotein than normal weight people with no heart disease. But they say that high blood pressure and smoking are more reliable ways of identifying a high risk of heart disease in this group of people.
More information
Here's where you can find a heart disease risk-assessment tool.
