Background: The prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD) is increasing in young adults. Risk factor profiling will help to prevent heart attacks in young patients. This study aimed to analyze the risk factor profile and predictors of major cardiovascular events (MACE) in young CAD patients.
Methods and results: From the Coronary REvascularization Demonstrating Outcome study in the Kyoto (CREDO-Kyoto) registry of Japanese patients undergoing their first coronary revascularization, 6,320 patients with complete data for all variables for statistical analyses were divided into younger (< or =55 years; n=898; 14.3%) and older (>55 years; n=5,422; 85.7%) patients. The risk factors that were more prevalent in the younger patients than in the older patients included: male sex, body mass index of >25 kg/m(2), current smoker, family history of CAD, dyslipidemia and metabolic syndrome-like risk factor accumulation. Multivariate analyses revealed that chronic kidney disease (CKD) was the only significant predictor of MACE, the composite of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular accident, in the younger patients. Importance of CKD as a prognostic factor was consistently shown by a multivariate analysis in the older patients.
Conclusions: Accumulation of multiple risk factors is prevalent and CKD is associated with MACE in young Japanese CAD patients.