Abstract

ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND:
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the main cause of mortality in industrial and developing countries. New risk factors including infections are under investigation as potential factors. One of these infectious agents is Toxoplasma gondii, few data have been published on the association of atherosclerosis (the usual cause of ischemic heart disease) and Toxoplasma gondii infection. The OBJECTIVE:
Was to investigate potential role of T.gondii infection as a risk factor for coronary atherosclerosis in ischemic heart disease patients and the correlation between T.gondii with other cardiovascular risk factors
PATIENTS AND METHODS:
This study was conducted on (58) patients with Ischemic Heart Diseases attended cardiac care unite in Al-Hussein teaching hospital in Nasseriya city, southern Iraq and 32 healthy controls ,all are free from clinically evident disease were attending the blood bank in Nasseriya city between November 2010 to the end of August 2011. the sera of the patients and control groups were tested for T.gondii antibodies using Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) technique. The obtained data was analyzed and the results were tabulated.
RESULTS:
22(37.9 %) in the case group and 11(34.4 %) in the control group were seropositive for T.gondii antibodies, odds ratio (OR) 1.167 . P= 0.915 . And there were no association between risk factors and Toxoplasma gondii infection, (Table 2, 5). ( Figure 1).
CONCLUSION:
This study shows that there is no association between Toxoplasma gondii infection and ischemic heart disease