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Higher serum calcium levels linked to increased risk for CAD, MI
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Patients with a genetic predisposition to increased serum calcium levels had a higher risk for CAD and MI, according to findings published in JAMA.
Susanna C. Larsson, PhD, associate professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues conducted a Mendelian randomization analysis with six single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with serum calcium on a sample of 184,305 participants, 60,801 of whom had CAD. Seventy percent of the participants with CAD had an MI.
The primary outcome was the odds of CAD and MI.
The six single nucleotide polymorphisms were linked to about 0.8% of serum calcium level variations. Overall inverse-variance weighted meta-analysis showed that the OR of CAD per 0.5 mg/dL increase in genetically predicted serum calcium levels was 1.25 (95% CI, 1.08-1.45) and the OR of MI per 0.5 mg/dL increase in genetically predicted serum calcium levels was 1.24 (95% CI, 1.05-1.46).
Results were similar for genetically predicted serum calcium levels and CAD in complementary analyses.
The researchers found no evidence of pleiotropy (Mendelian randomization-Egger intercept, –0.00035; P = .96) or heterogeneity between the Mendelian randomization estimates for the different variants (I2 = 0%; P for heterogeneity = .78).
“Whether the risk of CAD associated with lifelong genetic exposure to increased serum calcium levels can be translated to a risk associated with short-term to medium-term calcium supplementation is unknown,” Larsson and colleagues wrote. – by Darlene Dobkowski
Disclosure s : The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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