Received on July 16, 2007
Accepted on October 24, 2007

Lipids, Lipoproteins, and Cardiovascular Risk Factors

Plasma Concentration of Heat Shock Protein 27 and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: A Prospective, Nested Case-Control Study

¹ Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston; Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
² Harvard Medical School, Boston; Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston; Children’s Hospital Boston
³ INSERM Unit 698, Cardiovascular Hematology, Bio-Engineering and Remodeling, CHU X-Bichat, Université Paris 7, Paris, France
⁴ Vascular Research Lab. Fundacion Jimenez Diaz, Autonoma University, Madrid, Spain
⁵ Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, and the Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston; Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; Donald W. Reynolds Center for Cardiovascular Research
⁶ Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston
⁷ Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, and the Divisions of Preventive Medicine and Cardiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston; Harvard Medical School, Boston; Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston; Leducq Center for Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology; Donald W. Reynolds Center for Cardiovascular Research

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: i.kardys{at}erasmusmc.nl.

BACKGROUND: Heat shock protein 27 (HSP27) has been hypothesized to be a potential biomarker of atherothrombosis. However, no prospective studies have yet been performed to investigate the association between HSP27 plasma concentration and incident cardiovascular events among initially healthy individuals.

METHODS: We evaluated plasma concentrations of HSP27 at baseline among 255 initially healthy participants in the Women’s Health Study who subsequently developed myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, or cardiovascular death during a follow-up period of up to 5.9 years and among an equal number of women matched for age and smoking but who remained free of cardiovascular disease over the same time period.

RESULTS: Overall, HSP27 plasma concentrations were inversely associated with age (Spearman correlation coefficient r = -0.258, P <0.001), but not with other established cardiovascular risk factors. Conditional logistic regression analysis showed no significant association of baseline HSP27 plasma concentration with future cardiovascular disease; the odds ratio for upper vs lower tertile of HSP27 concentration at baseline was 0.99 (95% CI 0.62–1.57, P for trend = 0.99).

CONCLUSION: In this prospective study of initially healthy women, baseline HSP27 plasma concentration was not associated with incident cardiovascular events.