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In Spain, cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of mortality, accounting for 40% of all deaths. According to the most recent figures from the INE (National Statistics Institute), these illnesses caused 120,760 deaths in 2006. Of these, the two most common causes were ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, making up 31% and 27% respectively.

Cardiovascular diseases are characterised by having a multifactorial aetiology with different risk factors, many of them modifiable, thus allowing their prevention. These risk factors usually present themselves in association with each other, thereby increasing cardiovascular risk. At the same time, there are other unmodifiable risk factors, including age, sex and genetic makeup.

At present the determination of cardiovascular risk is assessed by the use of cardiovascular risk functions, with the best known probably being Framingham. But new functions are formulated which better adapt to different local populations.

These functions mainly analyse clinical and analytical aspects of the patient to determine the long-term cardiovascular risk. In spite of the huge effort made in order to improve current risk functions, in Spain 85% of cardiovascular events happen in patients classified as low and intermediated risk, with the latter representing 53.6%. This suggests that the information used in these risk functions is, although valuable, still insufficient in that it excludes analysis of genetic information.

Cardio inCode^® has been created with the aim of improving the effectiveness of current methods. Thus:
Cardio inCode is a personalized medicine service that studies and integrates genetic, clinical and lifestyle information in order to more precisely and specifically establish theoretical long-term cardiovascular risk.

Cardio inCode offers relevant information which helps the physician establish in a personalized way more appropriate:

.Preventive measures or
.Therapeutic measures

The three pillars of Cardio inCode^®

1. Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) risk evaluation: obtained by correcting the risk defined by classic measurements with genetic information associated with AMI. This information is additional to and independent of that currently included in present risk functions.
2. Evaluation of the physiopathological signalling pathways: based on the analysis of more than 120 genetic variants associated with: dyslipidemia, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, obesity, thrombosis and level of dependence on nicotine.
3. Personalised genetic advice: made up by an expert team which integrates genetic and clinical and lifestyle information to issue a personalised recommendation report for the prevention of cardiovascular risk. All based on the most relevant bibliographical data.

This service is currently available for research use only (RUO).