Study of Diagnostic Value of Cyclooxygenase-2 and Matrix Metalloproteinases in Atherosclerosis

Background and Aim: Atherosclerosis is a chronic systematic disease where lesion (plaque) develops results in activation of inflammatory reaction that leads to arterial obstruction. Atherosclerosis is the underlying cause for many cardiovascular diseases (CVD) which were estimated with 42 percent of total death in Saudi Arabia while Coronary artery diseases (CAD) accounted for 35 percent of total chronic diseases death in Saudi Arabia by 2008. Risk factors that attribute in progression of atherosclerotic lesion and subsequent complications are smoking, high Low Density Lipoprotein –Cholesterol (LDL-C), high blood pressure, obesity and alcohol.

Materials and Methods: This study was carried on 20 healthy individuals as a control group, 15 patients with stable angina, 15 patients with recent myocardial infraction (MI) and 15 patient 24-hours post MI. All subjects were males with age 45±65 years and underwent exclusion/inclusion criteria. COX-2, MMPs levels were quantitatively measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

Results: There is insignificant differences in both COX-2 and MMP-2 levels among studied groups (P = 0.450 and 0.246 respectively) .On other hand, MMP-9 demonstrate a significant elevation in its level in studied groups (P = 0.014): its level significantly increase in stable angina (31.474 ± 12.188 ng/ml) compared to both control (9.920 ± 0.075 ng/ml) and Post MI groups (16.012 ± 13.852 ng/ml) (P = 0.001 and 0.004 respectively) and significantly increase in MI group (26.020 ± 14.792 ng/ml) when compared to both control (P = 0.006) and post MI (P = 0.038) groups.

Conclusion: We can conclude that both COX-2 and MMP-2 cannot be used as markers for diagnosis of stable angina or MI. While MMP-9 as it showed significant elevation in its level in MI and then decrease in post MI, it can be considered as a good marker for confirming the diagnosis of MI and post MI stage.