Purpose: To investigate if hyper-homocysteinemia represents an independent risk factor of early coronary disease.
Methods: We studied a group of patients under 45 years old, that suffered a myocardial infarction from 3 months and 1 year before the study. The patients were matched with a group of normal controls of a check-up program, in terms of age, sex, smoking habits, presence of hypertension, obesity, (Quetelet Index), presence of diabetes, basal glycemia, total cholesterol, LDL and HDL cholesterol. Later we measured to patients (Pts) and controls (Cts) the plasmatic basal homocysteinemia (B HC) and 6 hours after a methionine overload of 0.1 g/kg body weight (L HC).
Results: [table: see text]
Conclusions: In this study hyper-homocysteinemia appears as an independent risk factor of early coronary disease. The measurement of homocysteinemia after the methionine loading test was more discriminative than the basal measurement.