title: The associations between smoking, physical activity, dietary habits and plasma homocysteine levels in cardiovascular disease-free people: the 'ATTICA' study.
abstract: Homocysteine levels are considered, by some investigators, as an independent factor of cardiovascular disease; however, others suggest that there is not a causal relationship. The aim of this work was to investigate the associations between homocysteine levels and several lifestyle-related factors. The ATTICA study is a population-based cohort that has randomly enrolled 1128 adult men and 1154 women, stratified by age and gender, from the greater area of Athens, during 2001-2002. Among several demographic, lifestyle, clinical and biochemical characteristics, we measured total plasma homocysteine levels. For the present analysis, we excluded people who had a history of cardiovascular disease. The factors that showed the strongest relationship with homocysteine levels, in both genders, even after adjusting for several potential confounders were: cigarette smoking (p = 0.03), endurance exercise (inverse, p < 0.05), fruit (inverse, p = 0.01) and vegetable intake (inverse, p = 0.04), and alcohol (p = 0.04) and coffee intake (p = 0.04). In conclusion, several lifestyle-related factors seem to be associated with homocysteine levels. However, the vast majority of the associations were weak when we adjusted for other co-factors. The latter may indicate the mutual confounding effect of various socio-demographic, anthropometric and other clinical characteristics on the relationship between homocysteine and cardiovascular risk.
authors.affiliation: First Cardiology Clinic, School of Medicine, University of Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chrysohoou
authors.forename: Demosthenes B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Panagiotakos
authors.forename: Christos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pitsavos
authors.forename: Akis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zeimbekis
authors.forename: Antonis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zampelas
authors.forename: Lambros
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Papademetriou
authors.forename: Constantina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Masoura
authors.forename: Christodoulos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stefanadis
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000097:blood* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D006115:Greece / Q000453:epidemiology; D006710:Homocysteine / Q000097:blood*; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009043:Motor Activity; D012307:Risk Factors; D012907:Smoking
chemical_list: D006710:Homocysteine