Comparison of the risk factors for coronary artery spasm with those for organic stenosis in a Japanese population: role of cigarette smoking

We compared the risk factors for coronary spasm with those for coronary ath erosclerosis in 183 patients with coronary spasm, 132 patients with coronar y organic stenosis, and 224 control subjects with chest pain syndrome. Our findings confirmed that, when compared with controls, age, gender, total ch olesterol, LDL-cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and cigarette smoking are all significant risk factors for coronary organic stenosis. On the other hand, only cigarette smoking proved to be a significant risk fact or for coronary spasm. Also, when compared between coronary spasm group and coronary organic stenosis group, the incidence of cigarette smoking in mal es was significantly higher in the coronary spasm group than in the coronar y organic stenosis group. We conclude that cigarette smoking is a crucial r isk factor for coronary spasm. On the other hand, serum lipid levels and th e incidence of hypertension and diabetes mellitus were within the normal ra nges in the coronary spasm patients and were thus poorly associated with co ronary spasm. These results showed that the risk factors for coronary spasm differ significantly from those for atherosclerosis-based coronary stenosi s in the Japanese. Among the risk factors fur coronary atherosclerosis (org anic stenosis) smoking alone was a significant preventable risk factor for coronary artery spasm. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights re served.