Comparison of Novel Risk Markers for Improvement in Cardiovascular Risk Assessment in Intermediate-Risk Individuals

CONTEXT: Risk markers including coronary artery calcium, carotid intima-media thickness, ankle-brachial index, brachial flow-mediated dilation, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP), and family history of coronary heart disease (CHD) have been reported to improve on the Framingham Risk Score (FRS) for prediction of CHD, but there are no direct comparisons of these markers for risk prediction in a single cohort. OBJECTIVE: We compared improvement in prediction of incident CHD/cardiovascular disease (CVD) of these 6 risk markers within intermediate-risk participants (FRS >5%-