Heart HealthApoB Cholesterol Test Outperforms LDL at Preventing Heart Attacks Study Finds
Millions of Americans rely on LDL cholesterol tests to gauge heart disease risk, but a new study published in JAMA suggests a different blood test — apolipoprotein B, or apoB — does a better job. Researchers from Northwestern Medicine used a computer simulation of 250,000 adults eligible for statin therapy to compare three cholesterol-testing strategies. They found that using apoB to guide treatment intensification prevented more heart attacks and strokes than LDL or non-HDL cholesterol testing. Crucially, it also proved cost-effective for U.S. healthcare payers. ApoB counts the actual number of harmful cholesterol-carrying particles in the blood, offering a more direct measure of cardiovascular risk than LDL levels alone. Despite growing evidence in its favor, apoB testing remains uncommon in routine clinical care.
