Author`s Reply

To the Editor,

We are grateful for the kind comments to our manuscript entitled “The association between platelet-lymphocyte ratio and coronary artery disease severity,” published in Anatol J Cardiol 2015; 15: 640-7 (1). In their Letter to the Editor, the authors emphasize the importance of the recently emerged inflammatory marker, platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), in atherosclerotic pathogenesis and request for the comparable PLR values of the mild atherosclerosis and control groups in our study.

There may be a few reasons to find similar PLR values between the mild atherosclerosis and control groups. Firstly, as we mentioned, our study sample size is not large enough to statistically demonstrate the significance of such a minor difference in PLR values of these two groups. Secondly, atherosclerotic plaques develop and progress within the arterial wall long before to protrude into the lumen, which cannot be detected by conventional angiography (lumenography). Because of the nature of the atherosclerotic process, we might misdiagnose patients with positive remodelling as normal coronary arteries, which could only be diagnosed by intravascular ultrasound. Finally, although statistically insignificant, there were more smokers in the control group than in the mild atherosclerosis group, which might affect our results.