medwireNews: Study results suggest that high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) could be a predictive biomarker of cardiovascular risk among patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).
In an analysis of 63 SLE patients who had no symptoms of cardiovascular disease, Karim Sacre (Paris-7 University, France) and colleagues found that 54.5% of 37 patients with detectable hs-cTnT levels had carotid plaques, compared with only 11.5% of 26 participants with undetectable hs-cTnT levels.
In a multivariate analysis, patients with detectable hs-cTnT had a significant eightfold increase in the risk for carotid plaque versus those with no detectable hs-cTnT.
“The results of our study raise the possibility that this easily measured biomarker could be introduced into clinical practice as a more reliable way of evaluating CVD risk in lupus patients,” Sacre told the press at the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR) 2017 in Madrid, Spain.
However, he cautioned that “we have a very limited number of patients,” and highlighted ongoing research analyzing the occurrence of cardiovascular events in addition to carotid plaque in a larger cohort of patients with longer follow-up.
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