Unemployment: here we go again.

made for measuring apolipoprotein B concentration, which is sometimes raised in patients with coronary heart disease but with normal low density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations,'2 especially if they are hypertriglycerdaemic. Lack of prospective data and difficulties in standardising assays, however, have been used as counter arguments."3 In case- control studies lipoprotein (a) has proved to be a powerful discriminant between those with and without coronary heart disease,'4 but as with apolipoprotein B prospective data are scanty and there are problems with its assay. Once these limitations have been overcome, however, measurement of these and other emerging risk factors, including subspecies of high density lipoprotein," may help define more precisely the risk of coronary heart disease and thus enable decisions on whether to treat, for example, premenopausal women with hypercholesterolaemia, to be more soundly based.