Oral Presentation No. 55
Is White Blood Count a Good Marker to Coronary Disease Risk?

High white blood cells (WBC) count is a well-recognized indicator of inflammation. Previous research has considered it a risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD). Other new inflammatory risk markers are expensive to test, are not readily available, lack standardization and have not been confirmed as risk markers by multiple prospective studies. We aim to investigate whether elevated WBC count representsan independent risk factor for CAD in our Portuguese population.

A case-control study with 3,160 individuals (mean age 53.1 ± 7.8; 77.6% male), namely 1,723 coronary patients and 1,437 controls, was performed. Together with WBC, the following CAD risk factors were analyzed: smoking, hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia and obesity through bivariate analysis. Multivariate logistic regression evaluated the independent risk factors for CAD.

Comparing cases with controls, 47.2% were smokers vs. 23.8% (P < 0.0001); 71.0% were hypertensive individuals vs. 52.3% (P < 0.0001); 89.0% had dyslipidemiavs 70.4% (P < 0.0001); 33.8% had diabetes vs. 13.2% (P < 0.0001) and 34.2% were obese patients vs. 28.9% (P = 0.001). After multivariate regression, smoking (OR = 3.14, P < 0.0001), diabetes (OR = 2.89, P < 0.0001), dyslipidemia (OR = 2.72, P < 0.0001), hypertension (OR = 1.95, P < 0.0001) and WBC (OR = 1.05, P = 0.035) remained as independent risk factors for CAD. Elevated white blood counts are associated with CAD risk in our population. This marker is inexpensive, widely available and may further predict inflammation and coronaryartery disease risk.