Association of smoking with serum homocysteine level in healthy adults: A cross sectional study

Background: smoking is known to be associated with an elevated serum homocysteine level. both are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. objective: to find out the association of smoking with serum homocysteine levels in healthy aults. study design: cross sectional study setting: department of internal medicine,king edward medical university/ mayo hospital,lahore. duration: 1st january 2010 to 30th june 2010. subjects and methods: after informed consent,thirty healthy adults from nearby community area of mayo hospital,lahore were included. smoking as a conventional risk factor was recorded. blood samples for fasting homocysteine levels of the subjects were collected on next day of interview. standard laboratory protocol was followed for transportation and laboratory analysis of blood samples. data was entered in spss 14. chi square test was applied to find out the association of smoking with serum homocysteine levels. results: study population consisted of 30 thirty healthy individuals. majority (50%) of individuals belonged to 46-55 years of age. mean age was 51.1 years. there was male predominance. out of total,57% participants were smoker while 43% were non-smoker. there was statistically significant association of smoking with elevated serum homocysteine levels (p<0.05). conclusions: smoking appeared to be strongly associated with elevated serum homocysteine levels in healthy individuals.