Does coronary artery calcium score predict 10-year risk of incident ASCVD events across different ages, sexes, and ethnicities?
Coronary artery calcium strongly and independently predicts 10-year ASCVD risk across all races, age groups, and sexes, with CAC = 0 and CAC ≥ 100 serving as valuable cutpoints for guiding preventive therapies.
Coronary artery calcium is associated strongly and in a graded fashion with 10-year risk of incident ASCVD as it is for CHD, independent of standard risk factors, and similarly by age, gender, and ethnicity. While 10-year event rates in those with CAC = 0 were almost exclusively below 5%, those with CAC ≥ 100 were consistently above 7.5%, making these potentially valuable cutpoints for the consideration of preventive therapies. Coronary artery calcium strongly predicts risk with the same magnitude of effect in all races, age groups, and both sexes, which makes it among the most useful markers for predicting ASCVD risk.
Budoff et al. (2018) studied this question.