Dr Eric Topol wrote about a big milestone recently – Cardiology professional organizations have finally recognized that Apo(B) and Lp(a) should be part of the lipid panel.
After reading Dr Attia’s Outlive, I’d asked for these as part of my panel. But I’d been denied – so here’s hoping that changes. In his words – “Think of how many people would have been identified at high-risk for atherosclerosis and cardiovascular events who were missed all this time because the guidelines didn’t keep up with the body of knowledge.“
Dr Topol’s post goes on to advocate for the CHIP test as part of the lipid panel.
CHIP, which stands for clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential, refers to presence of myeloid blood cells with a driver gene mutation (with a frequency of ≥ 2%) without any clinical criteria of a blood cancer. It turns out CHIP is a major biomarker, not just for blood cancer (an 11-fold risk of a blood malignancy, or absolute 0.5% risk per year), but also for heart disease, blood clot events such as stroke and pulmonary embolism, and many other chronic illnesses
He makes the case with a simple chart that shows that the risk of heart rate with CHIP present goes up 1.8x.
You can also see the trend clearly here.
I’m hoping we’ll continue to see more testing here and will hopefully see it in the guidelines sooner than 8 years later.
A Learning a Day 