Role of Circulating Endothelial Progenitor Cells in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis with Coronary Calcification
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are prone to premature atherosclerosis. We hypothesize that depletion of circulating endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) related to RA can contribute to the development of atherosclerosis. METHODS: We studied coronary calcifications by multidetector computed tomography and their relationship with different subtypes of circulating EPC in 70 patients with RA and 35 age- and sex-matched controls (mean age 54.1 +/- 10.2 yrs, 87% were women). The presence of coronary atherosclerosis was defined as an Agatston score > or = 10. Four subpopulations of EPC were determined by flow cytometry on the basis of surface expression of CD34, CD133, and KDR antigen: CD34+, CD34/KDR+, CD133+, and CD133/KDR+ EPC, respectively. RESULTS: Among those with RA, 15 patients (21%) had coronary atherosclerosis. The mean Agatston score was higher (61.8 +/- 201.7 vs 0.14 +/- 0.69; p = 0.01) and coronary atherosclerosis was more prevalent (21.4% vs 0%; p < 0.01) in patients with RA compared to controls. RA patients with coronary atherosclerosis were older (66.2 +/- 6.9 vs 51.5 +/- 16.2 yrs; p < 0.01), had higher prevalence of hypertension (46.7% vs 14.5%; p = 0.01), and had lower CD133/KDR+ (0.45% +/- 0.28% vs 0.89% +/- 0.81%; p < 0.01) and CD133+ EPC levels (0.74% +/- 0.39% vs 1.22% +/- 0.83%; p < 0.01), but similar CD34/KDR+ and CD34+ EPC levels (all p > 0.05) compared to those without. Multiple logistic regression revealed that older age (OR 1.25, 95% CI 1.10-1.41, p < 0.01) and lower CD133/KDR+ EPC (OR 0.07, 95% CI 0.00-0.97, p < 0.01) were independent predictors for coronary atherosclerosis in patients with RA. CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrated that RA patients with coronary atherosclerosis have significantly lower levels of CD133/KDR+ and CD133+ EPC than those without. In addition to older age, lower levels of circulating CD133/KDR+ EPC also predicted occurrence of coronary atherosclerosis in RA patients.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".