Ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1 after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

Abstract

Background: We studied the prognostic ability of serum ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCH-L1) after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), compared to that of neuron-specific enolase (NSE). Methods: In this post-hoc analysis of the FINNRESUSCI study, we measured serum concentrations of UCH-L1 in 249 OHCA patients treated in 21 Finnish intensive care units in 2010–2011. We evaluated the ability of UCH-L1 to predict unfavourable outcome at 12 months (defined as cerebral performance category 3–5) by assessing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), in comparison with NSE. Results: The concentrations of UCH-L1 were higher in patients with unfavourable outcome than for those with favourable outcome: median concentration 10.8 ng/mL (interquartile range, 7.5–18.5 ng/mL) versus 7.8 ng/mL (5.9–11.8 ng/mL) at 24 h (p