Endocrine Abstracts

Background: There are increasing evidences that inflammation is involved in the pathophysiology of both coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease. Adhesion molecules have been advocated as a marker of inflammation.

Objectives: To evaluate the capacity of inflammation’s markers (sICAM1, sVCAM1) to identify cardiovascular disease, comparing adhesion molecules with a standard diagnosis of cardiovascular disease.

Methods: We examined 35 postmenopausal women with mean aged of 57.91±12.91 years. As risk factors have been assessed the body weight, smoking status, glicemia, and serum lipids fractions. In order to confirm or exclude cardiovascular disease we perform clinical exam, ECG and, when was necessary, echocardiography, stress test or coronary angiography. Adhesion molecule (sICAM1 and sVCAM1) were measured (in ng/ml) in stored serum samples collected, using ELISA method. Optimum sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, and area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were evaluated.

Results: Cardiovascular disease was present in 14 (38.9%) of the cases. There were no significant differences registered regarding sICAM1’s and sVCAM1’s values between patients with and without cardiovascular disease (sICAM1 364.5±122.90 vs 362.79±116.93 ng/ml P=NS, respectively for sVCAM1 702.75±200.39 vs 605.07±172.77 ng/ml, P=NS). Area under the ROC curve was 0.505 for sICAM1 (P=NS) and 0.668 for sVCAM1 (P=0.07). Diagnostic cut off levels with the optimum sensitivity and specificity derived from the ROC curve were found to be: sICAM1 228.4 ng/ml (sensitivity 92.86%, specificity 19.05%) and for sVCAM1 685.59 ng/ml (sensitivity 57.14%, specificity 85.7%).

Conclusion: Although, sVCAM1 is under the influence of some factors that are not fully explained (such age, presence of endothelial dysfunction or other cardiovascular risk factors), in postmenopausal women, sVCAM1 seems to be a better identifier of women at risk for cardiovascular disease in comparison with sICAM1.