Diseases of the heart and the cardiovascular system are the leading cause of mortality in France, accounting for >180 000 deaths per year. Their incidence is expected to increase further in the next five decades due to rising life expectancy, obesity and type II diabetes in the general population. To achieve a further substantial drop in cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in the future, entirely new diagnostic avenues need to be opened up based on the detection of individuals who are at risk of developing cardiovascular diseases in order to facilitate preventive approaches. Activation or apoptosis of endothelial cells lining blood vessels is a crucial early event in the development of cardiovascular diseases and we and other groups have previously shown that remnants of this endothelial activation are found in human plasma as circulating shed-membrane microparticles (MPs) of endothelial origin and that their levels are independently associated with altered vascular function in patients with cardiovascular diseases. In addition, we and other groups demonstrated the prognostic role of endothelial MPs for cardiovascular mortality and major events in populations of patients with cardiovascular disease, and filed a European Patent Application on July 1st, 2009 (EP09305635) proposing MPs as a new measure of cardiovascular mortality risk. Our first goal is to develop high throughput measure of plasma EMP levels to analyze large numbers of samples and accelerate the transfer of this technology from a research laboratory to routine biological facilities or laboratory test companies. The second aim of this study is to monitor the added value of measuring circulating endothelial MPs as a prognostic marker for cardiovascular risk assessment in 2000 subjects from the Framingham Heart Study, a well-characterized and widely cited human population. This research will contribute to improving cardiovascular risk assessment in the general population and is likely to impact on healthcare decisions, as established risk factors and the use of contemporary biomarkers do not fully predict cardiovascular risk.