The Role of Inflammation in Myocardial Infarction

After an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) the inflammatory response seems to have a central role and is connected to major adverse outcomes such as ischemia-reperfusion injury, adverse cardiac remodeling, infarct size, and poor prognosis. The concept of monitoring inflammatory markers as predictors of post-myocardial prognosis is gaining more momentum. Finding the appropriate inflammatory biomarker that would serve as a prognostic marker after an AMI and could stratify the risk for adverse outcomes, could be extremely useful.

INFINITY is a multi-center, prospective, observational cohort study, aiming to assess the complex role of inflammation in the post-AMI period. The study plans to include 120 consecutive patients above 18 years old admitted to the four centers participating in the study.

A panel of inflammatory cytokines and adipokines will be recorded. A venous blood sample will be collected on patient admission (H0), 6-12 hours after admission (H6-12), 24-48 hours after admission (H24-48), and at the 30-day visit (D30). Blood will be collected for routine laboratory tests, as well as to measure the levels of the cytokines IL-6, IL-10, IL-18, IL-17, and the adipokines leptin, apelin, and chemerin.

60 carefully selected patients will consist of the control group. The control group will consist of individuals to whom the obstructive coronary artery disease would be ruled out either by invasive or non-invasive coronary angiography or by myocardium perfusion SPECT or stress echocardiography. The patient and control group will be matched at baseline by equating certain clinical characteristics of interest between the exposed and unexposed groups.

The study will test the hypothesis that circulating plasma levels of the above inflammatory biomarkers reflect different clinical manifestations of coronary artery disease and correlate with coronary anatomy, the severity of coronary artery disease, and the prognosis in a 6-month follow-up period. Finally, will investigate whether the integration of the above inflammatory biomarkers into the already established prognostic risk stratification model, GRACE score, could further improve its predictive power.