Cor Vasa 2024, 66(6):570-573 | DOI: 10.33678/cor.2024.056

Could Serum YKL-40 Level be the New Cardiovascular Risk Prediction Model?

Gökhan Ceyhun^a, Onur Altinkaya^b, Cüneyt Şeker^a, Ahmet Kiziltunc^c

^a Department of Cardiology, Faculty of Medicine, Ataturk University, Erzurum, Turkey

^b Erzurum Bölge Eğitim ve Araştirma Hastanesi, Erzurum, Turkey

^c Department of Biochemistry, Ataturk University, Erzurum, Turkey

Objective: Since cardiovascular diseases are a cause of serious morbidity and mortality, it is important to detect and treat them in advance. For this reason, many risk scales have been created, but there is currently no biochemical marker in routine use to estimate cardiovascular risk. Atherosclerosis is the most important reason for the development of cardiovascular disease, and vascular inflammation plays a role in the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis. It has been observed in many studies that the serum YKL-40 level has an effect on many steps in the development process of this inflammation. SCORE2 are used by the European Society of Cardiology to estimate 10-year cardiovascular risk. In our study, we investigated the relationship between this risk algorithm and the serum YKL-40 level, which is a biochemical marker.

Material and methods: 87 volunteers between the ages of 40-70 who applied to our clinic, who had not yet experienced a cardiovascular event but had risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, were included in the study. SCORE2 cardiovascular disease risk was calculated for the patients and serum YKL-40 levels were gaged. Serum YKL-40 levels change with age, regardless of the disease, in our study as in many studies. In order to eliminate this paradigm, we examined serum YKL-40 levels with a statistical model that evaluates them jointly with age.

Results: We could not detect a significant relationship with YKL-40 levels in the basal analysis performed by considering all parameters of SCORE2 algorithm. However, result of the statistical model that we evaluated with age, we found that the YKL-40 level is a biochemical parameter that can be used like SCORE2 in cardiovascular disease risk estimation (R² : 0.72, p < 0.001).

Keywords: Cardiovascular risk, SCORE2, SCORE2-OP, YKL-40

Received: June 2, 2024; Revised: June 23, 2024; Accepted: July 18, 2024; Prepublished online: June 2, 2012; Published: December 20, 2024  Show citation