Role of whole blood cell count indicators in monitoring the activity of Takayasu arteritis / 中华检验医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the relationship between neutrophil/lymphocyte (NLR), red blood cell distribution width (RDW), platelet/lymphocyte (PLR), platelet mean volume (MPV), platelet hematocrit (PCT) and platelet distribution width (PDW) and the disease activity of Takayasu arteritis (TA).Methods:A retrospective analysis was conducted on 86 TA patients (TA group) in Anzhen hospital from January 2017 to June 2019. Meanwhile, 85 healthy controls (control group) whose age and gender matched with TA were selected from the health examination center of Beijing Anzhen hospital. The blood samples were collected to measure the neutrophil/lymphocyte (NLR), red blood cell distribution width (RDW), platelet/lymphocyte (PLR), platelet mean volume (MPV), platelet hematocrit (PCT) and platelet distribution width (PDW) by resistance method. TA activity was determined according to the national institutes of health (NIH) score and India TA clinical activity score (ITAS2010). Spearman correlation analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between whole blood cell count indicators and ESR and hs-CRP. ROC curve was used to determine the threshold of TA disease activity.Results:The NLR, RDW and PDW in the TA group were higher than those in the control group [3.00 (1.78-3.48) vs. 1.76 (1.34-2.01), 14.10 (13.00-14.83) vs. 13.08 (12.50-13.35) and 13.65 (11.20-16.00) vs. 12.24 (11.20-13.20), P<0.000 1]. MPV and PCT in the TA group were lower than those in the control group [10.06±1.11 vs. 10.44±0.83 and 0.25 (0.20-0.28) vs. 0.27 (0.23-0.31), P = 0.011 and 0.014, respectively]. RDW and PCT in the active group of TA patients were both higher than those in the inactive group [14.61 (13.38-15.48) vs. 13.81 (12.88-14.33) and 0.27±0.07 vs. 0.23±0.06], with P values of 0.007 and 0.008, respectively. PCT in the active group of TA patients was positively correlated with ESR ( r=0.33, P=0.002). The optimal RDW threshold for determining the activity of TA disease was 14.150 (sensitivity was 55.0%, specificity was 100.0%, area under ROC curve was 0.802). The optimal threshold for judging the activity of TA disease by PCT was 0.245 (sensitivity was 66.7%, specificity was 92.3%, area under ROC curve was 0.84). The optimal threshold for PLR to determine the activity of TA disease was 131.257 (sensitivity was 71.7%, specificity was 76.9%, area under ROC curve was 0.714). Conclusion:RDW and PCT may be helpful to judge the activity of TA, however, the other indexes of whole blood cell count were not closely related to the activity of TA.