Women’s heart disease risk could be predicted up to 30 years in advance with one blood test, study finds

Predicting a woman’s heart disease risk could be a simple as administering a single blood test to screen for three risk factors, according to research published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study, which included nearly 30,000 women averaging 55 years of age, measured two types of fat in the bloodstream along with a certain type of protein with a blood test in 1993, then monitored the participants’ health for a 30-year period, the researchers said. "This is a large, convincing study that puts together three predictive blood tests that haven't been looked at in this way before." "It is a truism of medicine that doctors will not treat what they do not measure." Melissa Rudy is senior health editor and a member of the lifestyle team at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to melissa.rudy@fox.com.

"The strongest predictor of risk was a simple blood measure of inflammation known as high sensitivity C-reactive protein, or hsCRP, followed by cholesterol and lipoprotein(a)," lead study author Dr. Paul Ridker, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told Fox News Digital.