Combined Cholesterol & Bilirubin Tests as Risk Predictors for Coronary Artery Disease

Serum bilirubin has been identified as a protective factor in reducing the risk of coronary artery disease by acting as a powerful antioxidant. Factoring in total serum bilirubin with LDL-cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol. The US Air Force has developed a simple and inexpensive method to improve the accuracy of standard lipid (cholesterol) tests for improving the presence or risk of future onset of CAD.

This method, which improves the accuracy of CAD predictions by 10% as compared to cholesterol alone, can be used by cardiologists and other health professionals, or built into diagnostic software programs. A 10% improvement is significant, given that all known risk factors—blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking, age, etc.— only account for about 50% of predictive accuracy. The accuracy of CAD predictions can be further improved with bilirubin in cases where a smoker is under-reporting smoking activity—this is because bilirubin levels are lower in smokers, providing independent confirmation of this CAD-contributing factor. Finally, bilirubin is not an expensive analyte: it is measured routinely and is generally less expense than cholesterol measures.