Early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases can potentially cure subjects and save innumerable lives. Diagnosis and treatment of subjects at early stages by cardiologists remain a challenge. Here, the inventors have measured baseline sTREM-1 (triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells-1) in 10,000 initially healthy participants without prevalent cardiovascular 10 disease (CVD) from the Paris Prospective Study 3 (PPS3). They have quantified the association and predictive value of baseline sTREM-1 for incident CVD events over 10 years of follow-up. The analysis reveals strong, significant and independent association with incident CVD events combined and its subtypes (coronary heart disease, stroke, peripheral artery diseases, and heart failure). Furthermore, adding sTREM-1 to existing risk prediction algorithms such as SCORE2 15 or the US pooled risk equation improved the discrimination capacity of these models in a significant and more importantly in a clinically meaningful manner, including among those at moderate CVD risk. Furthermore, the inventors have examined CVD events such as aneurysm, arrythmias and thromboembolic events. Given the ongoing development of pharmacological molecules blocking blood sTREM-1, the inventors believe these findings support future 20 intervention trials testing to which extent sTREM-1 could be a relevant target for the primary prevention of CVD in the general population