Cardiovascular diseases are number one cause of death globally, with mortality rates higher than any other non-communicable disease. Vascular disease affects blood (arteries and veins) and lymph vessels of the circulatory system. Many factors, mostly associated to lifestyle (such as smoking, unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, stress etc) and/or having diabetes, being male and having high cholesterol levels favor the development of vascular disease. An active, healthy lifestyle is thus a first step towards improvement of vascular health.
Specific drugs have been developed to reduce vascular disease if adherence to a healthy lifestyle is low or is without effect. These include antihypertensives (lowering blood pressure drugs); antidyslipidemics (lipid lowering drugs) and antithrombotics (anti blood clotting drugs). However these drugs can be much improved upon and that is where the PRETREAT project comes in:
- PRETREAT aimed the identification of early non-invasive (blood and urine) makers of vascular disease so that intervention can be performed at a much earlier stage and hence be more effective and less aggressive (less side-effects).
- PRETREAT also aimed to better understand vascular disease by studying it on the very detailed (molecular) level using modern tools such as proteomics (analysis of all proteins that are modified in disease) and thereby proposing new drug targets.