title: The homocysteine distribution: (mis)judging the burden.
abstract: The nonfasting plasma total homocysteine (P-tHcy) concentration was measured in a random sample of 3025 Dutch adults aged 20-65 years (main study). The positively skewed distribution had a geometric mean of 13.9 micromol/L in men and 12.6 micromol/L in women. Blood of the main study was not cooled or centrifuged immediately after drawing. A stability study (n = 26) indicated that this could have resulted in a small (0.4 micromol/L) overestimation of the means. A comparative study (n = 88), and a reproduction of these results in an entirely different population (n = 213), showed a systematic difference in P-tHcy concentration of -2.4 micromol/L between our laboratory (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) and that in Bergen, Norway. With the information of the additional studies we provided precise and valid data of the Dutch P-tHcy distribution, from which we conclude the status in the Netherlands is worse than in other European countries. Furthermore, we showed that comparison of P-tHcy data is complicated unless the interlaboratory differences are known. @ 2001 Elsevier Science Inc.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Bilthoven, The Netherlands. angelika.de.bree@rivm.nl
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: de Bree
authors.forename: W M
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Verschuren
authors.forename: H J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Blom
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: de Graaf-Hess
authors.forename: F J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Trijbels
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kromhout
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006710:Homocysteine / Q000097:blood*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009426:Netherlands / Q000453:epidemiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013048:Specimen Handling / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016008:Statistical Distributions
chemical_list: D006710:Homocysteine