Systemic Inflammatory Response in Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy

Background —Response to immunologic and nonimmunologic injury has been reported to initiate the development of cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAVD). Although histopathologic examinations reveal signs of focal inflammation, little is known about the systemic inflammatory response in this accelerated coronary syndrome. Methods and Results —Therefore, we investigated high-sensitive C-reactive protein (CRP) in a large cohort of heart transplant (HTX) recipients (n=102, 90 male, mean age 45.2±11.5 years, 6.1±3.3 years after HTX) in correlation with a progression of luminal obstruction as assessed by serial coronary angiography (defined as an increase of focal stenosis ≥30% or detection of a new lesion) after a mean interval of 1.8±1.0 years. Patients with signs of an acute rejection or infection were excluded. In the entire group, CRP levels ranged from 0.2 to 12.7 mg/L (mean 2.6±2.7 mg/L). Patients with progressive CAVD (n=35) presented with significantly higher levels of CRP (4.1±3.3 mg/L) than did those with a nonprogressive course (n=67) (1.8±1.9 mg/L, P =0.001). These observations were independent of the initial indication for HTX (atherosclerotic disorder versus cardiomyopathy, P =0.18) and the severity of CAVD at baseline examination ( P =0.12). Conclusions —Progressive cardiac allograft vasculopathy is accompanied by a systemic inflammatory reaction, which gives further insight into the pathogenesis of this coronary syndrome and may well serve as an indicator for patients at risk.