People with No Known Heart Disease Can Still Have Fatty Deposits in Blood Vessels

• Researchers say atherosclerosis can still be a risk for people who have no known heart disease.
• That’s because screening done for the disease can sometimes miss non-calcified deposits in blood vessels.
• Experts say more advanced tests should be used when assessing a person’s heart health.

Heart disease is often called a “silent killer.”

That description is backed up by a new study showing that even many people who have no symptoms can have potentially deadly atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

Researchers in Sweden said that more than 42 percent of study participants ages 50 to 64 who had no known heart disease were found to have some degree of fatty deposits in their blood vessels.

Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, the chair of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern Medicine in Illinois and the president of the American Heart Association, told Healthline that the research is important because it looks at the general population rather than just people with known risk of heart disease.

Lloyd-Jones said the findings were not surprising, “given the prevalence of risk factors in our society, that these middle-aged people have some degree of atherosclerosis.”