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Plasma Urotensin II Act as a Diagnostic Biomarker for Acute Coronary Syndromes

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Abstract

Urotensin II (U-II), one of powerful vasoconstrictor peptides, is involved in the pathogenesis of hypertension, diabetes, myocardial infarction and heart failure. However, its role in patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) is still unknown. We performed the present study to measure plasma U-II level in patients with ACS and the healthy subjects in the Chinese Han population. Plasma U-II level in patients with unstable angina (UA 313 ± 286 pg/dl) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI 333 ± 269 pg/dl) was higher than in healthy controls (183 ± 154 pg/dl). Plasma U-II level is positively correlated with the Gensini score (r = 0.285, P = 0.003) and Apo B level (r = 0.239, P = 0.015). Moreover, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the combination of CRP and U-II was significantly higher than it for CRP (P = 0.024). We conclude that U-II, which is elevated in ACS patients, may act as a clinical non-invasive biomarker for ACS diagnosis.

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Abbreviations

Apo:

Apolipoprotein

ACS:

Acute coronary syndromes

AMI:

Acute myocardial infarction

Pro-BNP:

Pro-brain natriurtic peptide

CRP:

C reactive protein

HOMA-IR:

Homeostatic model assessment-insulin resistance

ROC:

Receiver operating characteristic

UA:

Unstable angina

U-II:

Urotensin II

UT:

Urotensin receptor

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (“973 Project” No. 2012CB517804 to Z. Yuan), the National Science Fund of China for Distinguished Young Scholars (NSFC 81025002 to Z. Yuan), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81100209 to Y. Wu). We thank Prof. Xu Li for technical assistance. All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study. This article does not contain any studies with animal subjects performed by the any of the authors.

Conflict of interest

All authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Animal studies

This article does not contain any studies with animal subjects performed by the any of the authors.

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Correspondence to Zuyi Yuan.

Additional information

Prabindra Maharjan and Yue Wu contributed equally to this work.

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Maharjan, P., Wu, Y., He, M. et al. Plasma Urotensin II Act as a Diagnostic Biomarker for Acute Coronary Syndromes. Int J Pept Res Ther 20, 145–151 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10989-013-9376-6

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