The enormous damage to human health from cardiovascular disease (CVD) poses significant challenges to both clinicians and public health workers.
In most cases, CVDs develop latently; their clinical signs appear at a late stage. Often, patients are unaware of the presence of the disease and die suddenly; it is extremely rare for a doctor to have the opportunity to examine a patient before his cardiovascular system is seriously affected. It follows from this that therapeutic measures alone cannot solve the problem of death from CVD. There is a need to make significant changes in research methods, despite the fact that they are based on clinical methods