Neural cell adhesion molecule-1 may be a new biomarker of coronary artery disease.

BACKGROUND: Patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) are often asymptomatic and their condition can go largely untreated, resulting in severe outcomes. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new biomarkers of CAD.

METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 540 patients were recruited. We performed a preliminary study, which included nine CAD-positive and nine CAD-negative patients, wherein the biomarker NCAM-1 was identified using label-free mass spectrometry. We then validated the efficacy of NCAM-1 in 429 CAD-positive and 93 CAD-negative patients.

RESULTS: In the preliminary study, we found 204 different proteins in the two groups, of which seven were found in all samples; from these, we decided to explore the use of neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM)-1 as a biomarker for CAD. We found NCAM-1 levels to be 53.22ng/ml lower in CAD patients (161.76±105.50ng/ml) than in control samples (214.98±146.55ng/ml; p=0.0011). Spearman correlation analysis showed NCAM-1 was significantly correlated with Troponin T (cTnT), and N-terminal B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in CAD-positive patients, and with homocysteine in CAD-negative controls. Moreover, in multivariable logistic regression analysis, decreased plasma NCAM-1 was significantly associated with increased risk of CAD (multivariable-adjusted odds ratios: 0.728; 95% confidence interval, 0.599-0.884, p=0.001), adjusting for age, gender, current smoking status, cholesterol, triglyceride, glucose, creatine, homocysteine, cTnT, and NT-proBNP.

CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggested that NCAM-1 may be a potential biomarker of CAD.