BACKGROUND Diverse ethnic groups may differ regarding the risk factors and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD). This study sought to assess the association between ethnicity and CAD risk and severity in six major Iranian ethnic groups. METHODS In this study, 20,165 documented coronary artery disease patients who underwent coronary angiography at a tertiary referral heart center were rec...

MRI of subjects with silent intracranial damages may provide more evidence than CT. Our objectives were to determine the prevalence of silent MRI lesions in patients with coronary artery disease. The study included 72 consecutive patients with angiographically proven coronary artery disease and 26 age and sex matched controls with normal coronary angiography. All subjects were evaluated for cor...

BACKGROUND It is unclear whether coronary artery stenosis affects the secretion of N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) from the heart independent of ventricular dysfunction. Therefore, this study evaluated the relationship between BNP and NT-proBNP secretion, plasma levels and the severity of coronary artery stenosis in patients with stable c...

Inflammation plays an important role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Recent studies indicate that macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is a potent proinflammatory cytokine which mediates the inflammatory process during atherosclerosis. The polymorphism of MIF gene (rs755622 [-173G/C], rs1007888, and rs2096525) were genotyped by TaqMan single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyp...

BACKGROUND Visceral adiposity contributes to cardiometabolic risk, and visceral adiposity index (VAI) had significant correlation with visceral adiposity. We aimed to explore whether VAI was associated with cardiac structure and function and assess the impact of the cut-off points of VAI defining visceral adipose dysfunction (VAD) on the severity of coronary heart disease (CHD). METHODS A tot...

High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) is an inflammation marker and potential predictor of cardiovascular events. However, there is no consensus on the relationship between plasma hsCRP levels and angiographically documented severe coronary lesions in patients with stable angina pectoris. In this study we aimed to assess whether plasma levels of hsCRP can indicate the severity of the coro...

BACKGROUND Recent research has supported the central role of coagulative factors in advancing atherosclerosis and causing coronary artery disease (CAD). The present study, for the first time, aimed to clarify the relationship between R353Q polymorphism for factor VII and the occurrence and severity of CAD in a large sample of Iranian population. METHODS Nine hundred and nineteen consecutive p...

BACKGROUND We investigated the relationship between the severity and presence of coronary artery disease (CAD) and a difference in systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP) between arms or between lower limbs. METHODS We enrolled 277 patients who underwent coronary angiography. We calculated the absolute (|right BP (rt. BP) - left BP (lt. BP)|) and relative (rt. BP - lt. BP) differe...