How we wish to be cited:
Norberg B. Homocysteine Days 2002 – a synoptic symposium [debate]. Rondel 2002; 13.
URL: http://www.rondellen.net
Homocysteine Days 2002 – a synoptic symposium
About one hundred doctors were assembled to the "Homocysteine Days 2002" in Stockholm Oct. 9-10. The speakers included among others Ian Graham, Jan Möller, Herman Nilsson-Ehle, Ottar Nygård, Helga Refsum, and David Smith. Kit producers and pharmaceutical interests around homocysteine defrayed the costs. However, the broadcasting from the panel was sober and balanced (cf 1-3).
The clinical significance of homocysteine is focused to beginning and end of life. It is a marker associated with involuntary infertility, miscarriage, and neural tube defects. In elderly, elevated homocysteine is associated with vascular diseases and dementia. The members of the panel carefully used neutral expressions such as "marker" and "association". The results of intervention studies against elevated homocysteine are hitherto inconsistent.
Homocysteine is an independent risk factor for vascular disease in the mathematical sense of the statistical models. However, it is not clear whether homocysteine is an independent risk factor in a biological sense. Homocysteine certainly is associated with vascular disease and dementia. The causality of the relationship has to be proven by intervention studies. There is still a possibility that homocysteine is only a marker for deficiency states associated with the fertile phase of women and biological aging. The sober and balanced sending from the present panel hopefully reaches the field and bush.
Bo Norberg
References
Published October 23, 2002