Usefulness of Serum Endothelin Levels in Predicting Death and Myocardial Infarction But Not Coronary Progression in Postmenopausal Women With Coronary Disease (from the Women's Angiographic Vitamin and Estrogen [WAVE] Study)

We performed a cohort study of 392 postmenopausal women who had coronary disease to assess whether baseline serum endothelin-1 level predicts angiographic disease progression, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or death. Angiographic progression was defined as the annualized change in minimal lumen diameter of all qualifying lesions for each patient. Twenty-nine patients died or had a myocardial infarction during follow-up. Each picogram per milliliter increase in endothelin-1 was associated with a 1.8-fold increased risk of death or myocardial infarction. After adjustment for potential confounders, endothelin-1 remained a predictor of clinical events but was not correlated with angiographic progression.