About CardiovascularCardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality in the western world, accounting for over 40% of total deaths each year. Yet up to 70% of individuals who develop heart attacks have normal levels of cholesterol, a test widely recognised as an indicator of coronary artery disease. Hence, the medical community needs better indicators of CVD risk. The cost to monitor and treat patients suffering from CVD, including heart attacks and other cardiac events such as strokes is enormous. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), the total financial cost of CVD and strokes in the US alone during 2001 was estimated at over $298 billion. The causes of CVD are multifactorial and therefore the Company is working on the development of a number of different products to assess CVD risk. Axis-Shield believes that these new markers will ultimately provide medical practitioners with the information they need to prescribe the most efficacious and cost effective therapies, the result being a healthier patient leading a more comfortable lifestyle and more efficient management of a chronic and potentially fatal disease. In the future we believe that early diagnosis and remedial action may be able to reduce the overall burden of cardiovascular disease. Most of our current revenue in this product area is derived from sales of tests to measure homocysteine, which has additional utility in identification of increased risk of neurodegenerative disease. Further information on homocysteine can be found under the product listing below, but main revenues continue to come from our OEM arrangements for our immunoassay products with Abbott Laboratories, Simens Diagnostics platforms and IL. Axis-Shield has also acquired rights to the clinical chemistry homocysteine detection technology of Catch Inc., and this is now available for a number of proprietary analysers. General news on Homocysteine can be found at http://www.homocysteine.org.uk.
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