CHANGES OF SERUM ANTIBODIES TO HEAT-SHOCK PROTEIN-65 IN CORONARY HEART-DISEASE AND ACUTE MYOCARDIAL-INFARCTION

Accumulating evidence indicates the involvement of heat shock proteins (hsp), a family of stress-inducible proteins, in atherosclerosis. For carotid atherosclerosis an association with an increase in hsp65 anti bodies has been demonstrated. To investigate whether such antibodies a re also associated with coronary heart disease (CHD) and acute myocard ial infarction (MI), an age- and sex-matched study with patients suffe ring from CHD (n = 114) and MI (n = 89) and healthy controls (n = 76) was performed. All study participants (n = 279) were consecutively rec ruited according to typical diagnostic criteria. Determination of anti body titres to hsp65 was performed by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent a ssay (ELISA). Hsp65 antibody titres in CHD showed a significant increa se compared to the healthy control group (P = 0.029), however, hsp65 a ntibody titres were found to be significantly lower in acute MI, compa red to CHD (P = 0.005). Alteration in hsp65 antibody titres showed no correlation to established cardiovascular risk factors, e.g. serum tot al cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, smoking, alcohol intake and body weight. In conclusion, ser um concentrations of hsp65 antibodies were elevated independently in c oronary heart diseases and declined in patients with acute myocardial infarction, indicating a possible involvement of the antibodies in the pathogenesis of this disease.