Long-term prognostic utility of pentraxin 3 and D-dimer as compared to high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and B-type natriuretic peptide in suspected acute coronary syndrome.

BackgroundVascular inflammation plays a key role in the development of atherosclerosis and acute coronary syndrome (ACS), and pentraxin 3 (PTX3) is one of several novel, promising markers of inflammation. In addition, D-dimer might serve as a marker of thrombogenesis and a hypercoagulable state following plaque rupture. The present study assesses the prognostic utility of these two biomarkers as compared to high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), in addition to conventional clinical risk factors for coronary heart disease in patients with suspected ACS.MethodsChest pain patients with suspected ACS (n = 871) were consecutively included in a prospective, observational study with a follow-up time of 84 months.ResultsAt 7-year follow-up, 332 patients had died and 203 had suffered an adverse troponin T-positive, non-fatal cardiac event. In the multivariate analysis, levels of PTX3 above 5.88 ng/mL (median) and D-dimer above 436 µg/L (lower limit upper quartile) indepen...