Increased GGT Linked to Cardiovascular Mortality

Increased GGT Linked to Cardiovascular Mortality: "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Sept 30 - An elevated level of gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) is an independent risk factor for death from cardiovascular disease, according to a report in the October 4th issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
'People with high GGT had more than a 1.5-fold risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases in comparison to people with normal low levels of GGT,' senior author Dr. Hanno Ulmer, from Innsbruck Medical University in Austria, said in a statement. 'For people under 60 years of age, this risk is even higher, amounting to more than twofold.'
Recent reports have linked GGT levels with cardiovascular disease (CVD), but most studies have had inadequate sample sizes to investigate any association with CVD mortality.
The new findings are based on a study of 163,944 Austrian adults who had GGT levels measured and were followed for up to 17 years.
In both men and women, a high GGT level was independently associated with CVD mortality and a clear dose-response relationship was observed.
In men, a high GGT was linked to death from chronic coronary heart disease, heart failure, and ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke. By contrast, the association with fatal acute MI did not reach statistical significance.
In women, a high GGT was significantly associated with death from all cardiovascular diseases, except for hemorrhagic and ischemic strokes.
In a related editorial, Dr. Michele Emdin, from the National Research Council in Pisa, Italy, and colleagues comment that 'elevation in serum GGT activity predicts outcomes in unselected populations and in patients with ascertained ischemic heart disease, independently of myocardial damage, thus adding to prognostic information provided by traditional risk factors.'
Circulation 2005."