Serum bilirubin level and aortic intima-media thickness in patients without clinical manifestation of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

摘要

We reported that serum bilirubin level was independently associated with thoracic aorta intima-media thickness (IMT). We thank Ozturk et al for their comments on this article. Ozturk et al state that we did not report conjugated and unconjugated bilirubin levels. Indeed some previous studies mention that it would be interesting to determine which of the different forms of circulating bilirubin are associated with a reduced risk of coronary artery disease. Antioxidant activity and cardioprotective potential may be attributable to any of the bilirubin forms, including free unconjugated bilirubin, protein-bound unconjugated bilirubin, 8-bilirubin, or mono- or diconju-gated bilirubin. So, it was reasonable to measure the total bilirubin levels in our study. Ozturk et al stated that patients with known atherosclerotic heart disease were excluded and if such patients were included a comparison could have been made. The main purpose of our study was to determine the association between serum bilirubin and sub-clinical aortic atherosclerosis. Thoracic aortic IMT has been reported as an earlier marker of preclinical atherosclerosis.