Background: The objective of our research was to study anticardiolipin antibody (ACLA) in the offspring of families at high risk for premature coronary heart disease (CHD) in comparison to controls, and the degree of agreement between ACLA levels in parents and children.
Material/methods: In an analytical case-control study, three paired parent-child groups of 50 each were selected by simple random sampling, and their IgG ACLA levels measured by ELISA method. A comparison was made between parents who had premature myocardial infarction (MI<55 years of age) and one child aged between 12 to 19 years as the case group, parents with MI>55 years and one child, and parents with no history of heart attacks and one child as the first and second control groups, respectively.
Results: The prevalence of positive ACLA in adolescents in the case group was significantly higher than the second control group (P=0.03), but this difference was not significant against the first control group (p>0.05). Regarding parents, there were significant differences between the case group and both control groups (P=0.04 and P=0.009, respectively). A substantial degree of correlation was found between positive ACLA in patients with premature MI and their children (kappa correlation coefficient =0.63, 95% CI, 0.47-0.79).
Conclusions: The findings of this study point to the probable presence of a familial immunological background in the onset of premature atherosclerosis with regard to ACLA, which can be measured as a risk factor in predicting premature CHD.