• Eur. J. Clin. Invest. · Feb 2014

    Observational Study

    Homoarginine and mortality in an older population: the Hoorn study.

    • Stefan Pilz, Tom Teerlink, Peter G Scheffer, Andreas Meinitzer, Femke Rutters, Andreas Tomaschitz, Christiane Drechsler, Katharina Kienreich, Giel Nijpels, Coen D A Stehouwer, Winfried März, and Jacqueline M Dekker.
    • Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
    • Eur. J. Clin. Invest. 2014 Feb 1; 44 (2): 200-8.

    BackgroundHomoarginine is an amino acid that may be involved in nitric oxide and energy metabolism. Previous studies in patient populations showed that low homoarginine levels indicate an increased risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease. We evaluated whether low plasma levels of homoarginine are associated with elevated, overall and cause-specific mortality.Materials And MethodsThe Hoorn study is a population-based study among older men and women. We calculated Cox proportional hazard ratios (HRs) for overall and cause-specific mortality according to sex-specific homoarginine quartiles.ResultsWe included 606 study participants (51·3% women; 70·0 ± 6·6 years). Homoarginine concentrations were higher in men (1·63 ± 0·51 μM), compared with women (1·30 ± 0·44 μM; P < 0·001). After a median follow-up time of 7·8 years, 112 study participants died, including 31 deaths due to cardiovascular diseases and 30 due to cancer. Associations between homoarginine levels and mortality showed a threshold effect with a significant risk increase from the second to the first quartile. Compared with the upper three quartiles, the age-, sex- and BMI-adjusted HR (with 95% CI) in the first quartile was 2·26 (1·52-3·32) for overall mortality, 4·20 (2·03-8·69) for cardiovascular mortality and 1·25 (0·55-2·85) for cancer mortality. These associations remained materially unchanged after multivariate adjustments.ConclusionsLow plasma concentrations of homoarginine are a risk marker for overall mortality and especially for cardiovascular mortality in the older general population. Further studies are warranted to elucidate the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms.© 2013 Stichting European Society for Clinical Investigation Journal Foundation. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…