Abstract 14210: Comparison of Two Recent Ceramide-based Coronary Risk Prediction Scores: CERT and CERT-2

Abstract

Introduction: The Coronary Event Risk Test (CERT) is a validated cardiovascular risk predictor that uses circulating ceramide concentrations to allocate patients into one of four risk categories. This test has recently been updated (CERT-2), now additionally including phosphatidylcholine concentrations. Hypothesis: We hypothesize that CERT and CERT-2 have the power to predict cardiovascular mortality in patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD). Methods: We investigated a patient cohort of 999 patients with established CVD. Results: Overall, comparing survival curves (figure) for over 12 years of follow up and the predictive power of survival models using net reclassification improvement (NRI), CERT-2 was the best predictor of cardiovascular mortality, surpassing CERT (NRI=0.456; p=0.01) and also the 2019 ESC-SCORE (NRI=0.163; p=0.04). Patients in the highest risk category of CERT as compared to the lowest category had a HR of 3.63 [2.09-6.30] for cardiovascular death; for CERT-2 the corresponding HR was 6.02 [2.47-14.64]. Among patients with T2DM (n=322), the HR for cardiovascular death was 3.00 [1.44-6.23] using CERT and 7.06 [1.64-30.50] using CERT-2; the corresponding HRs among non-diabetic subjects were 2.99 [1.20-7.46] and 3.43 [1.03-11.43], respectively. Conclusions: We conclude that both, CERT and CERT-2 scores are powerful predictors of cardiovascular mortality in CVD patients, especially in those patients with T2D, performance is even higher with CERT-2.