Association of Endothelin-1 with Accelerated Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy and Late Mortality Following Heart Transplantation. Journal of cardiac failure Parikh, R. V., Khush, K., Pargaonkar, V. S., Luikart, H., Grimm, D., Yu, M., Akada, K., Honda, Y., Yeung, A. C., Valantine, H., Fearon, W. F. 2018

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Endothelin-1 (ET-1) has been implicated in the development of post-heart transplantation (HT) cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV), but has not been well-studied in humans.METHODS AND RESULTS: In 90 HT patients, plasma ET-1 was measured within 8 weeks of HT (baseline) via a competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. 3D volumetric intravascular ultrasound of the left anterior descending artery was performed at baseline and at 1 year. Accelerated CAV (lumen volume loss) was defined using the 75th percentile as a cutoff. Patients were followed beyond the first year post-HT for late death or re-transplantation. A receiver operative characteristic curve demonstrated that a baseline ET-1 concentration of 1.75 pg/mL provided the best accuracy for diagnosis of accelerated CAV at 1 year [area under the curve=0.69 (0.57-0.82), p=0.007]. In multivariate logistic regression, a higher baseline ET-1 concentration was independently associated with accelerated CAV [odds ratio (OR)=2.13, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.15-3.94; p=0.01]; this relationship persisted when ET-1 was dichotomized at 1.75 pg/mL (OR=4.88, 95% CI: 1.69-14.10; p=0.003). Eighteen deaths occurred during a median follow-up period of 3.99 (2.51-9.95) years. Treated as a continuous variable, baseline ET-1 was not associated with late mortality in multivariate Cox regression [hazard ratio (HR)=1.22, 95% CI: 0.72-2.05; p=0.44]. However, ET-1 >1.75 pg/mL conferred a significantly lower cumulative event-free survival on Kaplan-Meier analysis (p=0.047), and was independently associated with late mortality (HR=2.94, 95% CI: 1.12-7.72; p=0.02).CONCLUSIONS: Elevated ET-1 early after HT is an independent predictor of accelerated CAV and late mortality, suggesting that ET-1 has durable prognostic value in the HT arena.

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