Visfatin serum concentration is associated with cardiac allograft vasculopathy in heart transplant recipients

Abstract

Cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) still is one of the most important limiting factors of long-term survival following heart transplant (HT). This study aimed to investigate the association between proinflammatory adipokine-visfatin and the incidence of CAV in HT recipients. After HT, 182 patients who had a follow-up visit at the Transplantation Clinic between 2016 and 2017 were analyzed. The median age was 60.5 years, and 76.4% were men. The incidence of CAV was 54.9%. According to the multivariable proportional hazard regression analysis, visfatin level (1.795 [1.539-2.094]; P