This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Cardiovascular Disease/ Myocardial Infarction  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 142 words of the full text and any section headings.

In Reply: We agree with Drs Modest and Kaufmann that CRP might be helpful in identifying patients most likely to respond to antibiotic treatment. We are currently exploring the importance of CRP, other markers of inflammation, and additional measures of C pneumoniae infection as part of our trial.

Dr Nieto cites data to support the role of C pneumoniae in both the initiation of an atherosclerotic plaque and the progression of such plaques. We agree that a secondary prevention trial cannot define the value of an intervention in a primary prevention setting. We chose a secondary prevention trial to study the use of azithromycin mainly for logistical reasons centered on the incidence of cardiovascular events and the potentially more favorable risk-benefit assessment were the outcome to be successful.

Please refer to the original article for author affiliations and financial disclosures.—ED.

Michael W. Dunne, MD; Rebecca J. Benner, PhD; Christopher M. O'Connor, MD; Marc A. Pfeffer, MD, PhD; Joseph B. Muhlestein, MD; Louis Yao, MD; Sandeep Gupta; Marian R. Fisher, PhD; Thomas D. Cook, PhD

Letters Section Editor: Stephen J. Lurie, MD, PhD, Senior Editor.

JAMA. 2004;291:303.

RELATED ARTICLES

Antibiotics and Coronary Heart Disease
Geoffrey A. Modest and Julie Kaufmann
JAMA. 2004;291(3):302.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Antibiotics and Coronary Heart Disease
F. Javier Nieto
JAMA. 2004;291(3):302-303.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Antibiotics and Coronary Heart Disease—Reply
Sorin Pislaru and Frans Van de Werf
JAMA. 2004;291(3):303.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Azithromycin for the Secondary Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease Events: The WIZARD Study: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Christopher M. O'Connor, Michael W. Dunne, Marc A. Pfeffer, Joseph B. Muhlestein, Louis Yao, Sandeep Gupta, Rebecca J. Benner, Marian R. Fisher, and Thomas D. Cook
JAMA. 2003;290(11):1459-1466.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT