To show the effect of intermittent fasting during ramadan on endothelial dysfunction via TIMI frame count.

Abstract

Fasting and coronary functions are prestige fields for the study. There are a limited number of studies on these topics. The effect of Ramadan fasting on endothelial dysfunction, which can be manifested by loss of nitric oxide bioavailability, has been demonstrated via flow-mediated vasomotion in patients with the slow coronary flow in a small number of studies. To our knowledge, there is no study showing the relationship between TIMI frame count and Ramadan fasting. We aimed to prove that Ramadan fasting can improve endothelial dysfunction which can be documented via the TIMI frame count method in angiography. This retrospective study included 67 patients diagnosed with the coronary slow flow by coronary angiographic before Ramadan. All of them were evaluated again via TIMI frame count within a period of 1 to 3 months after Ramadan. We tested our hypothesis that fasting may improve endothelial dysfunction and it was proved by the TIMI frame count method in our study. TIMI frame counts measured angiographically from LAD, Cx, and RCA and they were significantly lower than the counts before fasting. All coronary frame count parameters showed significant improvement after Ramadan compared with the baseline values before the Ramadan fasting period (P < 0.001). Our results revealed that fasting and lifestyle changes during Ramadan may be beneficial for the improvement of endothelial dysfunctions in patients with the slow coronary flow and this can be showed easily using TIMI frame count. This is a practical and easy method for showing coronary functions.