Comparison of plasma homocysteine and stress defect score in gated myocardial perfusion SPECT study

ABSTRACT Background and Aim: İn our country, the prevalence of CAD has been increasing and becoming one of the most important health problems. Therefore, early and accurate diagnosis of the disease is of great importance for the prevention of mortality and morbidity occurred. As well as risk factors such as advanced age, male gender, family history of CAD, diabetes, obesity, hypertension and high cholesterol; high levels of HCY has become one of the risk factors for CAD. GATED SPECT myocardial perfusion scintigraphy is a non-invasive, simple and easy technique used in diagnosis and predicting prognosis of CAD. The aim of this study was to compare the level of homocysteine with stress defect scores that we obtained from GATED Myocardial Perfusion SPECT study. Methods: Between November/2012-March/2013, 166 patients with suspected coronary artery disease referred to our department for the myocardial perfusion scintigraphy included in this study. The study consisted of 96 women and 70 men (mean age 56±11,6). Fasting blood samples of patients taken prior to exercise or pharmacological stress and homocysteine levels were measured in blood samples by ELISA. Visually evaluated for the presence of ischemia. The numerical parameters of the left ventricle was obtained automatically by the software quantitative gated SPECT (QGS). Results: According to the scintigraphic results, 60(%57,1) of the patients were normal and 45(%42,9) of the patients had ischemia. Mean homocysteine values of patients were found to be 16,36±9,7 ?mol/L in normal group and 16,6±8,5 ?mol/L in the ischemic group (p=0,895). Conclusion: We found no significant correlation between homocysteine levels and cardiovascular risk parameters obtained from GATED myocardial perfusion SPECT. Keywords: Coronary artery disease, Homocysteine, myocardial perfusion scintigraphy