Coronary Artery Calcification Is an Independent Stroke Predictor in the General Population
Stroke Reports Monday, March 11th, 2013STROKEAHA: February 28, 2013
Background and Purpose—Coronary artery calcification (CAC) is a noninvasive marker of plaque load that predicts myocardial infarcts in the general population. Herein, we investigated whether CAC predicts stroke events in addition to established risk factors that are part of the Framingham risk score.
Methods—A total of 4180 subjects from the population-based Heinz Nixdorf Recall study (45–75 years of age; 47.1% men) without previous stroke, coronary heart disease, or myocardial infarction were evaluated for stroke events over 94.9±19.4 months. Cox proportional hazards regressions were used to examine CAC as stroke predictor in addition to established vascular risk factors (age, sex, systolic blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein, high-density lipoprotein, diabetes mellitus, smoking, and atrial fibrillation). Read more
