Australian doctors have created a lipid-based risk score to help manage the ‘troubling group’ of patients at intermediate risk of CVD.

Based on a routine blood test, the new score provides better cardiovascular risk stratification for those in the intermediate zone than the outdated Framingham-based equation, according to the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute-led team.

They found that for every 100 intermediate-risk patients reclassified using their lipidomic-enhanced risk score (LRS), 36 would move up to the high-risk group while 16 would shift down to the low-risk category.

“This could facilitate the triage of individuals for non-invasive imaging such as coronary artery calcium scoring, fostering precision medicine in CVD prevention and management,” they wrote in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology this week.