Reappraisal of effects of serum chemerin and adiponectin levels and nutritional status on cardiovascular outcomes in prevalent hemodialysis patients

Abstract

Although chemerin, an adipokine, increases the cardiovascular (CV) risk in obese people, it is associated with a survival advantage in incident hemodialysis (HD) patients. We explored the potential effects of chemerin on CV outcomes in prevalent HD patients. This prospective study included 343 prevalent HD patients. The composite outcome was the occurrence of CV events and death during follow-up. We used multivariate Cox regression analysis to test the predictive power of different chemerin and adiponectin levels and geriatric nutritional risk index (GNRI) for the outcomes. HD patients with higher chemerin levels (≥211.4 ng/mL) had a lower risk of CV events (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 0.64; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.41-0.98) and composite CV outcome (adjusted HR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.45-0.99) than those with lower chemerin levels (<211.4 ng/mL). When evaluating CV outcomes, we identified an interaction between chemerin levels and GNRI, but not between chemerin and adiponectin levels. The findings remained robust in the sensitivity analysis. Thus, in prevalent HD patients with negligible residual renal function, higher chemerin levels predict more favourable CV outcomes.