Enzyme pretenders

Statins: protectors or pretenders in prostate cancer?

The role of statin therapy in prostate cancer (PCa) prevention and treatment is plagued by controversy. This critical review of published clinical series reveals several caveats in earlier studies, which reported no benefit. Recent studies that adjust for confounding factors have demonstrated statin therapy to be associated with PCa prevention and favorable clinical outcomes. Developed as inhib...

Pretenders to the throne of affordable healthcare?

Pretenders and Contenders: Inflammation, C‐Reactive Protein, and Interleukin‐6

T he initiation of atherosclerosis and its progression to an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) are intricate processes with many factors, but one central factor is inflammation. Interleukin-6 is a proinflammatory cytokine that may have a role in the initiation, progression, and vulnerability of atherosclerotic lesions. Interleukin-6 works upstream of CRP (C-reactive protein) and downstream of inter...

Separating the contenders from the pretenders: competitive high-throughput biomarker screening in large population-based studies.

Despite great enthusiasm for biomarkers as tools to enhance risk prediction and to lead the way in a transformation towards personalized cardiovascular medicine, progress in the biomarker field has been painstakingly slow, particularly in the area of population screening. Some individual biomarkers such as C-reactive protein (CRP) have demonstrated consistent associations with incident cardiova...

Cardiac enzyme in emergency medicine

Objective: Acute chest pain is an important and frequently occurring symptom in patients. Chest pain is often a sign of ischemic heart disease. Chest pain due to suspected Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) is responsible for a large and ijncreasing number of hospital attendances and admissions. Current practice for suspected ACS involves troponin testing 10–12 hours after symptom o...