J Thromb Haemost: Antiphospholipid syndrome and the relationship between laboratory positive scant and NBTE prevalence

Non-bacterial thrombosis endocarditis (NBTE) is a potential complication of antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) in the form of non-infectious lesions of one or more heart valvesThere are very limited tools to tell clinicians which APS patients can benefit from echocardiogram screeningIn a recent study published in Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, an authoritative journal of thrombosis and clotting diseases, researchers aim to test the hypothesis that the risk of NBTE morbidity and morbidity is directly related to the number of positive results tested in APS laboratoriesIn this single-center retrospective cohort study, researchers searched an electronic database to identify APS patients who were treated at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota (January 1, 1993-June 26, 2016)The demographic data, clinical manifestations, echocardiogram characteristics, laboratory test results and survival data were analyzed in detail611 patients met the APS diagnostic criteria and 386 (63%) received an echocardiogram during the study periodOf these, 58 (15%) were found to have NBTEDouble-positive (19.4%) and triple-positive (27.0%) patients with NBTE were more common than in single-positive patients (5.7%, p0.001)The survival of patients without NBTE was significantly reduced (p 0.01) in patients who had more than 1 positive result in the laboratory examinationCox-proportional risk analysis showed that APS patients were more likely to be diagnosed with NBTE (RR 20.1; 95% CI 1.3-316.6; p 0.03) if the laboratory test exceeded 1 positive resultshows that the prevalence of NBTE in APS patients is high (15%)The prevalence of the disease is particularly high in patients with double or triple positive results in the laboratory