Maria Kemp

This has been mentioned by @AdrianSotoMota many times already, but let me reinforce it — almost as quickly as the current paper was being finalized, a new manuscript classifying these subgroups was being drafted by Adrian himself and is now under submission. As he’s said over the past several days, there was enormous heterogeneity within our cohort. That’s why there’s growing excitement about identifying who the low progressors are versus the rapid progressors — not just for research purposes, but for practical clinical use. I initially wanted to focus on a simple population average of plaque as though it could be treated as one single thing, a homogeneous group. But as soon as the second scans came in, Adrian pointed out the significant heterogeneity across participants. That’s why he expanded on it in this paper — and it’s the focus of the follow-up one. Even when breaking out subgroups, including the rapid progressors, there was still no association with LDL or ApoB. The relevance of baseline plaque being predictive of future plaque progression is gigantic within this exact context of no association with LDL/ApoB— and identifying as best as possible who is more at risk. This is probably one of the biggest ironies of all, that our research is helping to best identify who may be at the greatest risk in the Lean Mass Hyper-Responder population.