A new mathematical model should renovate the sorely outdated strategy for predicting cardiovascular disease in women. Much progress has been made in the understanding of the disease processes leading to heart problems in women, yet the models, or algorithms, for assigning risk have been in place for over 40 years.

The development of a new model, by Nancy Cook Sc.D. and colleagues from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, may catapult the science of predicting women’s coronary risk into the 21st century. The details of the Reynolds Risk Score were published in the February 14, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The group accounted for recent scientific advances to update the list of potential factors contributing to cardiovascular disease, utilized a large patient population from which to generate new mathematical models to assign risk, and tested the new algorithms in a large group of women.

According to the authors, current risk assignment procedures, which rely on risk factors assigned in the 1960’s, needed remodeling: about 20% of women who experience a cardiovascular event (heart attack, stroke, etc.) had none of the defined risk factors... Read More