Serum CTRP4 tied to coronary artery disease in T2DM

In patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), higher serum levels of circulating C1q tumour necrosis factor-related protein 4 (CTRP4) appear to aggravate the likelihood of coronary artery disease (CAD), a recent study has found.

Researchers enrolled 240 T2DM patients of whom 180 (mean age 59.43 years, 75.6 percent men) developed CAD, as determined by coronary or computed tomography angiography, while the remaining 60 (mean age 57.9 years, 58.3 percent men) did not. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to measure serum CTRP4 levels.

Logistic regression analysis, adjusted for sex, age, body mass index, lifestyle, lipid profile, and comorbidities, found a significant and positive correlation between total CTRP4 and CAD likelihood (odds ratio [OR], 1.58, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.35–1.84). This interaction remained significant even after further adjusting for glycated haemoglobin (OR, 1.56, 95 percent CI, 1.33–1.83) and C-reactive protein (OR, 1.54, 95 percent CI, 1.26–1.88).

Grouping participants according to CTRP4 tertiles yielded similar results, with CAD risk progressively increasing along with increasing categories (p_trend<0.001). In addition, every 1-standard deviation increase in CTRP4 levels aggravated CAD risk by over 16 percent (OR, 16.74, 95 percent CI, 4.59–60.98).

Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis likewise revealed that CTRP4 was a strong predictor of CAD, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.87. In this regard, CTRP4 significantly outperformed C-reactive protein and glycated haemoglobin, whose AUCs were 0.80 and 0.74, respectively (p<0.01 for both comparisons).