Online calculator predicts your risk of heart disease

Researchers have developed a new online metabolic calculator that could help to predict a person’s risk of heart disease and diabetes.

And, they say it’s far more accurate than traditional methods.

The new ‘crystal ball’ tool incorporates a number of factors that conventional tests don’t take into account, including gender, race, and ethnicity.

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Researchers have developed a new online metabolic calculator that could help to predict a person’s risk of heart disease and diabetes. And, they say it’s far more accurate than traditional methods

Developed by researchers with the University of Virginia School of Medicine and University of Florida, the new tool is designed to help patients make the necessary lifestyle changes that could help prevent suffering down the line.

‘This boils it down to telling a patient, “On the risk spectrum, you are here, and you’re in a position where we’re worried you’re going to have a cardiovascular event in the next 10 years,’ said Dr Mark DeBoer of the UVA School of Medicine and the UVA Children’s Hospital.

‘My hypothesis is that the more specific information you can give to individuals at risk, the more they will understand it and be motivated to make some changes.’

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Typically, tests of this kind rely on five factors to predict risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke: high blood pressure, high fasting triglycerides, low HDL (good) cholesterol and high fasting blood sugar.

If patients have abnormalities in at least three of the categories, they’re considered to be at elevated risk.

But, DeBoer says this approach is too black-and-white.

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Researchers have developed a new online metabolic calculator that could help to predict a person’s risk of heart disease and diabetes. 

While the score is intended for doctors, anyone with the required health information can use it, they say.

‘As is true in most processes in life, the reality is that this risk exists on a spectrum,’ said DeBoer.

‘Someone who has values in each of these individual risk factors that are just below the cutoff still has more risk for future disease than somebody who has very low values.’

With the new test, dubbed the ‘metabolic crystal ball,’ the researchers use the traditional risk factors plus race, gender, and ethnicity.

This helps to address some of conditions that often go undetected, the researchers say. 

African-American men, for example, are at high risk for heart attack or type 2 diabetes, but are not likely to be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. 

Developed by researchers with the University of Virginia School of Medicine and University of Florida, the new tool is designed to help patients make the necessary lifestyle changes that could help prevent suffering down the line. A stock image is pictured 

While the score is intended for doctors, anyone with the required health information can use it, they say.

And, a small study including the outcomes in more than 13,000 people found that it is more accurate in predicting the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes than earlier methods.

‘This would suggest that when somebody has this congregation of metabolic syndrome findings, there probably is some underlying process that is producing those findings, and that those underlying processes are also contributing to future risk,’ DeBoer said.

‘The hope is that a scoring system like this could be incorporated in the electronic medical record to calculate someone’s risk and that information could be provided both to the physician, who then realizes there is an elevated risk, and to the patient, who hopefully can start taking some preventative steps.’