Abstract P351: Ethnic Differences in the Risk Estimates of Novel Biomarkers for Future Cardiovascular Outcomes

Abstract

Background: Elevated inflammatory markers, haemostatic factors as well as homocysteine predict cardiovascular disease (CVD) events and mortality. Although racial/ethnic disparities in CVD risk factors and outcomes exist, comparative data on the predictive utility of novel biomarkers for future CVD events in US ethnic groups is limited. Methods: The study comprised 6814 asymptomatic men and women (52.85%), aged 45-84 yrs without prior cardiovascular disease, enrolled in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis [MESA] obtained from NHLBI Data repository. 6270 asymptomatic men and women [1384 Hispanics, 2409 Caucasians, 753 Chinese and 1724 African Americans] with a host of novel biomarkers drawn were considered for this analysis. The CVD events were defined as ALL CVD events and HARD CVD events per MESA protocol (see Table). Results: A total of 302 all CVD events and 203 hard CVD events were identified during a mean follow up of 4.6 years. We observed significant ethnic differences in the prognostic utility of novel biomarkers for cardiovascular risk assessment, in a large multi-ethnic population of US adults free of clinical cardiovascular disease. While homocysteine emerged as a robust biomarker across racial cohorts, most other biomarkers analyzed predominantly predicted events in Caucasians (see Table). Conclusion: These findings raise serious concern about the prognostic potential or generalizability of risk stratification tools across racial subsets and underscore the need for further ethnicity-specific research in this area.