Recent publications on Residual Risk

Follow-up of the NIPPON DATA 90 prospective general population cohort study showed an association between non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL cholesterol) and risk for death from coronary heart disease.
 
NIPPON-DATA 90 (National Integrated Project for Prospective Observation of Non-communicable Disease And its Trends in the Aged, 1990-2005) is a large cohort study of cardiovascular disease in the general population in Japan. This report investigated whether non-HDL cholesterol, which includes low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, was predictive of cardiovascular mortality in 8383 subjects followed up for 20 years. In 6701 subjects with lipid data aged <75 years and without a history of cardiovascular disease, 69 died from coronary heart disease and 112 from stroke over this period. Compared with subjects with non-HDL cholesterol <3.9 mmol/L, the risk of coronary heart disease death increased by 27% with non-HDL cholesterol levels of 3.9-4.3 mmol/L (hazard ratio 1.27, 95% confidence interval 0.65-2.49), by 81% in those with levels of 4.4-4.8 mmol/L (hazard ratio 1.81, 95% confidence interval 0.92-3.55), and by 240% in those with levels ?4.9 mmol/L (hazard ratio 2.40, 95% confidence interval 1.30-4.43). This association remained significant after adjustment for other cardiovascular risk factors (P trend=0.010). However, there was no significant association between non-HDL cholesterol and stroke.
 
These findings reaffirm the importance of non-HDL cholesterol as a predictor of future coronary heart disease death, as reported from analyses in Caucasian subjects.