The role of growth differentiation factor -15 (GDF-15) levels in association with syntax score in predicting the complexity of coronary artery lesion

The complexity of coronary artery disease (CAD) lesions significantly influences patient outcomes and determines the choice of treatment approaches. For that reason, several classifications were established to grade these lesions and predict clinical outcomes effectively, which led to the discovery of the SYNergy between percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with TAXUS™ and cardiac surgery (SYNTAX) scores. Growth differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15) is a transforming growth factor that showed to increase significantly in various pathological conditions, including cardiovascular disease. So, the current study aimed to assess the levels of GDF-15 in association with the SYNTAX score to predict lesion complexity in CAD in a prospective comparative study that was conducted on 120 patients with CAD categorised according to SYNTAX score into low, intermediate, and high scores who were subjected to an assessment of the demographic factors, lipid profile, and GDF-15 and compared with each other with an assessment of the association of the measured markers with the SYNTAX score. The results of the present work showed that as the syntax score went up, the levels of GDF-15 went up significantly, and the ROC curve results showed that the levels of GDF-15 have excellent discrimination ability in differentiating between patients with a high syntax score and patients with a low score with a sensitivity and specificity of 92% and 98%, which leads to the conclusion that levels of GDF-15 may be used as a predictor for the complexity of coronary artery lesions in parallel with SYNTAX score.