WASHINGTON — Race was a strong predictor of premature coronary artery disease, with white and Asian Indian patients more likely to have PCAD than black and Hispanic patients in a study of 416 patients aged 40 years and younger, Amit Amin, M.D., reported at the Clinical Research 2005 meeting.
Dr. Amin, of the John H. Strong Hospital of Cook County, Ill., and his colleagues conducted a retrospective study of cardiac risk factors in patients who underwent coronary angiography between 1993 and 2001. The study may be the first to assess premature coronary artery disease (PCAD) in a predominantly nonwhite population, Dr. Amin noted in an oral presentation of a poster.
About 30% of the patients were black, and 20% were Hispanic; their mean age was 36 years. The overall prevalence of PCAD in the study population was 33%. Diabetes, dyslipidemia, and smoking were significant predictors of PCAD in the study population as a whole, Dr. Amin said at the meeting, sponsored by the American Federation for Medical Research.
Dyslipidemia had no significant impact on PCAD in the subset that combined white and Asian Indian patients, but dyslipidemia increased the odds of PCAD approximately threefold in the subset of black and Hispanic patients.
About half the study population had risk factors of hypertension and smoking. Dyslipidemia, diabetes, and smoking were among the strongest modifiable risk factors; obesity was not a significant independent risk factor for PCAD in this study.
The overall mortality rate was 5.8% at about 3.5 years' follow-up.