Hyperhomocysteinemia as an Independent Risk Factor for Coronary Heart Disease. Comparison with Conventional Risk Factors/Hiper-homocisteinemia como fator de risco independente para doenca coronariana: comparacao com fatores de risco convencionais

The present study was designed to evaluate the strength of association of raised plasma homocysteine concentration as a risk factor for coronary heart disease independent of conventional risk factor. It was a case control study conducted at Punjab Institute of Cardiology Lahore. A total of 210 subjects aged 25 to 60 years comprising of 105 newly admitted patients of CHD as cases and 105 age and sex matched healthy individuals with no history of CHD as control were recruited for the study. Fasting blood samples were obtained from cases and controls. Plasma homocysteine was analyzed by fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA) method on automated immunoassay analyzer (Abbott IMX). Total cholesterol, triglyceride and HDL cholesterol were analyzed using calorimetric kit methods. The concentration of LDL cholesterol was calculated using Friedewald formula. The patients were also assessed for traditional risk factors such as age, sex, family history of CVD, hypertension, smoking and physical activity, and were compared with control subjects. The collected data was entered in SPSS version 24 for analysis and interpretation. The mean age in controls and experimental groups were 43.00[+ or -] 8.42 years and 44.72[+ or -] 8.59 years with statistically same distribution (p- value= 0.144). The mean plasma homocysteine for cases was 22.33[+ or -] 9.22 [micro]mol/L where as it was 12.59[+ or -]3.73 [micro]mol/L in control group. Highly significant difference was seen between the mean plasma level of homocysteine in cases and controls (p