Value of serum-soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 for the noninvasive risk assessment of transplant coronary artery disease, posttransplant ischemic events, and cardiac graft failure

Background-Adhesion molecules on arterial endothelium have been implicated in spontaneous atherosclerosis and transplant coronary artery disease (CAD) . We studied whether elevated serum-soluble intercellular adhesion molecule -1 (sICAM-1) during the immediate posttransplant period was a risk factor f or CAD, posttransplant ischemic events, or cardiac graft failure. Methods and Results-We initially studied serum sICAM-1 in a subset of 16 ca rdiac allograft recipients (5.5 +/- 0.7 samples per patient) to determine a cutoff point that best correlated with presence of arterial and arteriolar endothelial ICAM-1 in matching endomyocardial biopsies. The cutoff value w as 308 ng/mL. Subsequently, we prospectively evaluated serum sICAM-1 in ser ial samples (5.3 +/- 0.1 per patient) obtained during the first 3 months af ter transplantation in a validation subset of 130 recipients and correlated early sICAM-1 levels with long-term outcome. Serum sICAM-1 >308 ng/mL, cor related significantly with ICAM-1 on arterial and arteriolar endothelium (P =0.02). Cardiac allograft recipients with serum sICAM-1 >308 ng/mL had 2.67 (95% CI, 1.28 to 5.59, P=0.009) times greater risk of CAD and 3.63 (95% CI , 1.05 to 12.5, P=0.04) times greater risk of graft failure. Recipients wit h sICAM-1 >308 ng/mL also developed more severe CAD (P=0.009) and more isch emic events (P=0.03) after transplantation. Conclusions-Serum sICAM-1 levels can be used to noninvasively assess risk o f transplant CAD, posttransplant ischemic events, and cardiac graft failure .