Homocysteine Chronology

I was fascinated to read the report entitled "Homing in on Homocysteine."¹ It is marvelous that Kilmer McCully persevered with his research, and that its great importance is finally being acknowledged.

In the excellent report prepared by Ricki Lewis, however, there was an error in the chronology of events. Win Barber and I at the Wills Eye Hospital found that Connie had markedly elevated levels of homocysteine in her urine. She had been admitted to the Wills Eye Hospital for surgery for glaucoma, and it was clear that she had some type of "syndrome" that did not appear to have been previously described. Consequently, we obtained a 24-hour urine specimen and found that she had abnormally high homocysteine and low cystathionine in her urine. Additionally, she had an abnormally high level of methionine in her serum. It seemed reasonable that the basic problem was either an absence of cystathionine...