Assessment of serum sST2 for cardiac involvement in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies

To assess the diagnostic performance of soluble growth stimulation-expressed gene 2 (sST2) for cardiac involvement in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIMs).

From a cohort of 237 patients with IIMs, 86 were finally included and 18 exhibited cardiac involvement. The comparison of demographic, clinical, and laboratory parameters between IIM patients with and without cardiac involvement was conducted. Additionally, independent predictors for cardiac involvement and the diagnostic performance of sST2 were analyzed.

The prevalence of cardiac involvement in IIMs was 20.9 %. The medians (interquartile range, IQR) of sST2 (65.6 [33.7-92.9] vs. 14.5 [7.8-25.4] μg/L) and N-terminal B-type pro-natriuretic peptide (NTproBNP, 120.2 [65.5-324.1] vs. 44.0 [16.8-104.6] ng/L) were significantly elevated in IIM patients with cardiac involvement compared with those without cardiac involvement. Multivariable logistic regression showed elevated levels of sST2 (OR = 3.936, 95 % CI 1.808-8.571, P = 0.001) and NTproBNP (OR = 2.308, 95 % CI 1.302-4.093, P = 0.004) were risk factors for cardiac involvement in IIM patients. The combined receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis of sST2 and NTproBNP indicated high diagnostic values in distinguishing IIM patients with cardiac involvement from those without cardiac involvement, with 94.4 % (95 % CI 72.2 %-99.7 %) sensitivity, 87.3 % (95 % CI 76.9 %-93.4 %) specificity, and 0.926 area under the ROC curve (95 % CI 0.840-1.000, P < 0.001).

sST2 serves as a valuable biomarker for detecting cardiac involvement in patients with IIMs.