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(Circulation. 2003;108:e9044.)
© 2003 American Heart Association, Inc.

Cardiovascular News

Ruth SoRelle, MPH

Circulation Newswriter

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

A New Marker?

Circulating pregnancy-associated plasma protein A (PAPP-A) appears to be a novel predictor of future ischemic events as well as the need for percutaneous intervention or coronary artery bypass graft surgery in patients who have a suspected myocardial infarction but are negative for troponin, said Finnish researchers in this week’s issue of Circulation (Circulation. 2003;108:1924–1926).

The researchers, led by Juha Lund, MD, of the University Central Hospital in Turku, Finland, described PAPP-A as a marker of atherosclerotic plaque activity. It is also a zinc-binding matrix metalloproteinase. They studied 200 consecutive hospitalized acute coronary syndrome patients, 136 of whom were troponin negative for as long as 24 hours. They measured the new marker PAPP-A when the patients were admitted, between 6 and 12 hours after admission, and after the patients had been in the hospital a day.

During the 6 months that they were monitored, 26 (19.1%) of the troponin-negative patients died from cardiovascular disease, had a second myocardial infarction, or needed revascularization. The researchers found that elevated PAPP-A was an independent predictor of an adverse outcome.

A Source for C-Reactive Protein
Human coronary artery smooth muscle cells produced the most C-reactive protein when incubated with a combination of interleukin (IL)-1ß and IL-6, said researchers from the University of Texas–M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the UT Health Science Center at Houston, and the Texas Heart Institute at St Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston.

Only modest amounts of C-reactive protein were produced when the cells were incubated in the presence of only one of the interleukins, said . . . [Full Text of this Article]