Pentraxin-3 in coronary artery disease: A meta-analysis.

AIMS: Studies on the prognostic significance of circulating pentraxin-3 level in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) have yielded conflicting results. The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the prognostic value of circulating pentraxin-3 level in CAD patients.

MATERIALS/METHODS: We made a systematic literature search in Pubmed, Embae, CNKI, Wanfang, and VIP database from their inception to January 10, 2019 for prospective cohort studies that investigated the association between pentraxin-3 level and adverse outcomes in patients with CAD. The outcome measures were all-cause mortality, cardiac death, and cardiac events (cardiac death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, heart failure or coronary revascularization). Multivariable-adjusted risk ratio (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) was pooled for the highest versus the lowest pentraxin-3 group to summarize the predictive value.

RESULTS: Nine studies were included, enrolling 5,174 CAD patients. Overall, CAD patients with the highest pentraxin-3 level had an increased risk of all-cause mortality (RR 1.81; 95% CI 1.43-2.28), cardiac death (RR 1.77; 95% CI 1.38-2.26), and cardiac events (RR 1.61; 95% CI 1.16-2.25). However, elevated pentraxin-3 level appeared to not significantly increase the risk of cardiac events (RR 1.63; 95% CI 0.71-3.72) in stable CAD subgroup.

CONCLUSIONS: In CAD patients, elevated circulating pentraxin-3 level is possibly an independent predictor of all-cause mortality, cardiac death, and cardiac events. However, interpretation of these findings should be with caution due to the small number of studies analyzed.