A study is hoping to reveal the early signs of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in order to create drugs to treat the condition before symptoms have developed.
Despite being the biggest killer in the Western world the individual causes of the various types of CVD: coronary heart disease, heart attack, heart failure and stroke, are largely unknown.
As part of a new £5 million study, researchers at the University of Glasgow and colleagues across Europe hope to identify early signs of physiological change in the body that indicate nascent CVD. The project is worth £557,000 to Glasgow.
Dr Christian Delles of the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, said: "We all know that smoking, over-consumption of alcohol and a high-fat diet can increase the risk of developing CVD but we currently know very little about the earliest stages of the disease."
He added: "At present, drug-based interventions are based on risk-factor control - for example through reducing existing high blood pressure or using statins to reduce blood cholesterol levels. However, if we can identify early signs or biomarkers of the disease before symptoms arise, we have the opportunity to develop interventions to stop disease before it becomes a problem."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article