Abstract Objective: To investigate the variations of serum ghrelin levels in children with left-to-right shunt CHD, and analyse the correlation with the geometric structure of the heart. It may provide some clinical guidance for evaluating the early changes of cardiac structure and function in CHD children. Methods: A total of 93 children with left-to-right shunt CHD who were hospitalised to Children’s Hospital of Soochow University from September 2021 to February 2023 were included in the CHD group (of which 58 were ventricular septal defect and 35 were patent ductus arteriosus). In addition, 57 cases (mainly inguinal hernia) were selected as the control group. The corresponding clinical data were recorded, and the fasting serum ghrelin levels of the two groups were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay on the day of admission. Then, the clinical data and serum ghrelin levels of the two groups were compared, and the Spearman correlation was analysed. Results: The serum ghrelin level in CHD group was higher than that in control group, and the difference was statistically significant ( P 0.05). Ghrelin in the enlarged heart group was lower than that in the non-enlarged heart group, and there were statistical significance of among those groups ( P 0.05). The left ventricular end-systolic diameter Z-scores, left ventricular mass Z-scores, left ventricular mass index, and left ventricular end-diastolic volume-scores in the cardiomegaly groupwere higher than those in the non-cardiomegaly group, and those two groups were significantly different ( P 0.05). Conclusion: The levels of serum ghrelin are increased in CHD children, and serum ghrelin is negatively correlated with left ventricular end-diastolic diameter and left ventricular end-diastolic volume in cardiac geometric structure, and positively correlated with left ventricular remodelling index. Additionally, patients with cardiac enlargement present with a low serum ghrelin level. These findings collectively suggest that serum ghrelin may play a potential role in cardiac remodelling.
Zhou et al. (Thu,) studied this question.