This particular study looked at inflammation through imaging (CT scans) as part of Biograph's $17,500 program. You can get at the underlying signal fairly cheaply through a simple blood test (hs-CRP).
Inflammation is likely a marker, but not the cause of heart failures.
That doesn't contradict it being an independent risk factor, but up to recently, it was assumed be causal driver.
Importantly, routine bloodwork and clinical tools – including ... hs-CRP [among other tests] ... – showed no correlation with the presence of coronary inflammation and failed to identify which patients had inflamed arteries.
If all the other biomarkers of inflammation "showed no correlation with the presence of coronary inflammation" as predicted by this scan, then how exactly do they assess the positive predictive value of the scan?
I don't see how one can spin this into a positive finding - their preprint says that the only correlate they find with their new measurement is BMI. By my reading, not even male sex is associated with more inflammation. It sounds like they've identified a fancy BMI estimator, and not a very good one.
This is in asymptomatic patients, who already have a great estimator for 10-year heart disease mortality risk in the coronary calcium score which isn't even obliquely mentioned in their abstract. Edit: the paper shows no correlation with calcium, either
> Men demonstrated higher rates of elevated FAI-Score than women (52.8% vs. 25.8%, p=0.016; ≥90th percentile: 26.4% vs. 3.2%, p=0.007).
I am not saying this is good or interesting science (IIUC this should make us believe that fewer people with coronary inflammation go on to develop heart disease than we would have otherwise thought?) but their score is at least correlated with sex.
Recently I learned that only those with over-active immune systems survived the 14th century plagues. Therefore, inflammation is to be taken seriously, or at least understood in this historical context, depending on your ancestry.
As for the article, the findings come as no surprise given what we know about the risk factors in the post-smoking world. Nowadays nutrition, specifically saturated fats in combination with lots of sugar and salt, as found in today's artificial foods is showing up in the research (not paid for by 'big beef').
There is no need to over-think it, just stay off the corporate 'food' and cook from fresh ingredients, where you don't get 'HFSS' (UK government term for high fat/salt/sugar) held together with weird chemicals. Sure, nobody has time for that, but this is the frontier of public health, a.k.a. the 'obesity crisis', with a simple solution - actually bother to cook!
It's fairly well-known that inflammation is an independent risk factor for heart disease, alongside LDL cholesterol (or ApoB) and blood pressure: https://www.empirical.health/blog/inflammation-and-heart-hea...
The American College of Cardiology looked at a bunch of inflammation biomarkers and standardized on hs-CRP: https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2025.08.047
Inflammation is likely a marker, but not the cause of heart failures. That doesn't contradict it being an independent risk factor, but up to recently, it was assumed be causal driver.
Importantly, routine bloodwork and clinical tools – including ... hs-CRP [among other tests] ... – showed no correlation with the presence of coronary inflammation and failed to identify which patients had inflamed arteries.
This is in asymptomatic patients, who already have a great estimator for 10-year heart disease mortality risk in the coronary calcium score which isn't even obliquely mentioned in their abstract. Edit: the paper shows no correlation with calcium, either
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.19.26364786...
I am not saying this is good or interesting science (IIUC this should make us believe that fewer people with coronary inflammation go on to develop heart disease than we would have otherwise thought?) but their score is at least correlated with sex.
As for the article, the findings come as no surprise given what we know about the risk factors in the post-smoking world. Nowadays nutrition, specifically saturated fats in combination with lots of sugar and salt, as found in today's artificial foods is showing up in the research (not paid for by 'big beef').
There is no need to over-think it, just stay off the corporate 'food' and cook from fresh ingredients, where you don't get 'HFSS' (UK government term for high fat/salt/sugar) held together with weird chemicals. Sure, nobody has time for that, but this is the frontier of public health, a.k.a. the 'obesity crisis', with a simple solution - actually bother to cook!