Up-regulation of soluble P-selectin predicates its prognostic value in patients with ankylosing spondylitis

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory disease with a high rate of disability. To find a proper prognosis marker is helpful for the treatment of AS. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether soluble P selectin (SP selectin) exerted effects on the prognosis of AS patients. Firstly, we detected the expression level of SP selectin in 85 AS patients and 60 normal subjects using quantitative real-time-polymerase chain reaction (QRT-PCR) assay. The result demonstrated that SP-selectin was over expressed in AS patients compared with healthy controls and the difference was significant (P < 0.05). Chi-square test was used to estimate whether SP selectin was associated with clinicopathologic characteristics. The factors of stages (P = 0.002), HLA-B27 (P = 0.002), ESR (P = 0.001) and C-reactive protein (P = 0.000) were considered to be related to the expression of SP selectin, which indicated that SP-selectin might be involved in the development of AS. Besides, the prognosis of AS patients after treatment was explored and analyzed via Cox regression analysis. The analysis suggested that ESR and SP selectin both served as independent prognostic biomarkers for AS (HR = 2.069, 95% CI = 1.049-4.080; HR = 4.562, 95% CI = 1.766-11.784). Taken together, our study revealed that not only the level of SP selectin was upregulated, but also SP selectin could predict the prognosis of AS patients.