Low Plasma Carotene Concentrations Are Associated with an Increased Risk of Acute Coronary Syndrome in a Korean Population
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) includes acute myocardial infarction and unstable angina, which are manifestations of coronary atherosclerosis. Circulating concentrations of carotenoids have been suggested to exert a protective effect in the development of coronary heart disease. We investigated whether plasma carotenoids – xanthophylls (lutein, zeaxanthin, and beta‐cryptoxanthin) and carotenes (alpha‐carotene, beta‐carotene, and lycopene) – were related to the risk of developing ACS in middle‐aged Korean adults. Included were 30 subjects diagnosed with ACS (cases) and 30 age‐ and sex‐matched control subjects. Plasma concentrations of carotenoids were measured by high performance liquid chromatography. The odds ratio (OR) of each plasma carotenoid was estimated by a logistic regression model adjusted for waist circumference. Compared to the controls, the cases had a significantly greater waist circumference (85.0 ± 8.6 cm vs. 80.6 ± 8.3 cm; p < 0.05) and lower HDL cholesterol concentration (45.9 ± 11.9 vs. 51.6 ± 11.7 mg/dl; p < 0.05). Plasma concentrations of carotenes, but not xanthophylls, were significantly lower in the cases as compared with controls (alpha‐carotene: 0.11 ± 0.05 vs. 0.17 ± 0.18 umol/l, p < 0.05; beta‐carotene: 1.00 ± 0.62 vs. 1.54 ± 0.88 umol/l, p < 0.05; lycopene: 0.21 ± 0.16 vs. 0.62 ± 0.39 umol/l, p < 0.001). After adjusting for waist circumference, plasma concentrations of beta‐carotene (OR = 0.92, 95% CI 0.85–0.99; p = 0.025) and lycopene (OR = 0.57, 95% CI 0.42–0.79; p < 0.001) were associated with lower risk of ACS. No significant association with the risk of ACS was observed for plasma xanthophyll concentrations. This study provides evidence for inverse associations between plasma beta‐carotene and lycopene and the risk of developing ACS, suggesting that consumption of fruits and vegetables (especially, carrots, winter squash, tomatoes) may play a protective role in the development of ACS in the Korean population. Support or Funding Information This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF‐2012R1A1A2008597) and USDA 1950‐51000‐087.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".