Background: Inflammation plays a major role in the development of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its progression. Recent studies have shown that pentra-xin-3, osteoprogerin and tumor necrosis factor alpha are key factors in MetS pathophysiology, but evidence for endorsing their clinical use is currently unclear and insufficient. The study aimed to evaluate the associa-tion between the inflammatory biomarkers levels and the severity of MetS.
Methods: We conducted a prospective study on 80 patients (40 males and 40 females), age matched. The study protocol included: medical history, physical exa-mination, 6-minute walk test distance, biochemistry tests, electrocardiogram, echocardiography and ca-rotid ultrasonography. We also performed plasmatic measurement of pentraxin-3, osteoprogerin and tumor necrosis factor alpha, in addition to standard bioche-mistry tests.
Results: Subjects with severe MetS had higher values of BMI and waist circumference (p<0.001, p=0.001). PTX-3 levels where significantly higher in patients with severe MetS (p=0.03) and the values were not influen-ced by age or gender. OPG positively correlated with BMI (R=0.264, p=0.018). 6MWTD was lower in pati-ents with severe MetS (p=0.005), while CCA-IMT was higher in these group of patients (p=0.005). Also, the ROC curve analysis for PTX-3 identified a cut-off value of 10.7 ng/dL that differentiate between mild and se-vere MetS (AUC 0.656; Se=47.1% (95%CI 36.1-62.3%); Sp 78.9% (95%CI 54.4-93.9%)).
Conclusion: Pentraxin-3 might be useful for quan-tifying the severity of MetS, while osteoprogerin can-not be used as predictive marker to identify atheroscle-rotic plaques in MetS patients.
Acknowledgments: T his research was supported by the internal grant no. 4995/18/08.03.2016 of the “Iu-liu Hatieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.