Background: Several large-scale international studies have shown that hyperhomocysteinemia is an important risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD). Though homocysteine levels among CAD subjects of different populations in India have been studied, the association of hyperhomocysteinemia with conventional CAD risk factors has not been thoroughly investigated. Our objective was to study the association between hyperhomocysteinemia and a few conventional risk factors among CAD subjects of Kerala.

Methods and Results: We estimated plasma homocysteine concentration among coronary artery disease subjects (n=92) and investigated the association of hyperhomocysteinemia with smoking, hypertension, diabetes and age in these subjects. Smokers had elevated homocysteine levels when compared to non-smokers (18.3 ± 8.8 vs. 12.4 ± 6.7 μmoles/L); increased homocysteine concentrations were noticed among hypertensives compared to non-hypertensives (15.3 ± 6.7 vs.12.9 ± 8.5 μmoles/L), while no significant differences were noticed between diabetics and non-diabetics and also between subjects stratified into different groups based on age. Smoking and hypertension were found to contribute to hyperhomocysteinemia independent of other variables studied.

Conclusions: It can be concluded from this study that among the variables studied, hyperhomocysteinemia was strongly associated with smoking and hypertension in CAD subjects of this population. (J Clin Prev Cardiol 2013;2(3):123-7)

Keywords: coronary artery disease (CAD); diabetes mellitus; hyperhomocysteinemia; hypertension; smoking

Volume 2, Number 3, Pages: 123-7

Full text of this article: HTML  | PDF