Markers of hypercoagulation and von Willebrand factor in postmenopausal women with unstable coronary artery disease. Discriminatory ability regarding unstable coronary artery disease and coronary atherosclerosis using receiver operating characteristics

OBJECTIVES: Many women with typical anginal chest pain have normal coronary angiograms. The pathogenetic mechanisms behind the chest pain in these patients are unknown but may be due to increased thrombogenicity. We evaluated markers of hypercoagulation and thrombosis in women with clinical signs of unstable coronary artery disease (CAD). METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 158 patients with unstable CAD and 101 controls were examined: 16% of the patients had normal vessels and 84% had coronary atherosclerosis at coronary angiography. Mean plasma concentrations of von Willebrand factor antigen, soluble fibrin (SF), thrombin-antithrombin complex and D-dimer were significantly higher, whereas there was no difference regarding prothrombin fragment 1+2 between patients and controls. Patients with coronary atherosclerosis had higher mean plasma levels for most variables compared with those with normal coronary vessels, although only significantly higher for SF. D-Dimer was significantly higher in patients with normal coronary vessels compared with the control group. Although multivariate analyses showed strong significant correlations of the haemostatic variables to the diagnosis of unstable CAD, receiver operating characteristics (ROC) revealed that none of the variables represented high diagnostic accuracy in separating patients with unstable CAD. Likewise, none of the variables was particularly good at identifying coronary atherosclerosis. CONCLUSION: Our results are in favour of a hypercoagulable state in postmenopausal women with unstable CAD and coronary atherosclerosis, whereas this does not seem to be the case in patients with normal vessels. ROC revealed no variable to be particularly clinically useful in separating patients from controls or patients from those without coronary atherosclerosis.