Galectin-3: a novel blood test for the classification of patients with COPD. An observational study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the major causes of mortality and mortality affecting the whole world. In the inflammatory process, lectin is elevated and consequently, Galectin-3 expression is increased. This relation has been revealed by studies on coronary diseases. However, studies on the association of Galectin-3 with COPD and even other pulmonary diseases have been limited, although it has been studied and described on cardiologic patients. For this reason, in this study Galectin-3 levels in different stages of COPD patients were investigated and whether Galectin-3 could be a guide clinically. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This is an observational prospective study, approved by local ethic committee (30112015-12), which included three groups of patients, COPD exacerbation, COPD stable and control group, admitted to tertiary healthcare between 01.09.2016 and 01.09.2017. RESULTS: 137 subjects were included in the study. The mean age of patients in the study was 70.6. Galectin- 3 level in the group of COPD (exacerbation and stable) was significantly lower than the control group (p < 0.001). The Galectin-3 level was significantly lower in COPD exacerbation group than groups of stable COPD and control. And also, Galectin-3 level was significantly lower in stable COPD group than the control group (p values: 0.034, 0.001 and 0.013, respectively). The ROC analysis for the Galectin-3 levels between the COPD patients (exacerbation and stable) and the control group is shown in Figure 2 (AUC = 0.784). When the cut-off points of Galectin-3 is selected as 11.4; for this cut-off point, sensitivity is 83% and specificity is 71% for this cut-off point (AUC: 0.79 %95 GA: 0.70–0.86 p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: COPD is a disease with high mortality and morbidity and efforts are being made to identify its severity and exacerbations with various biomarkers. In this study, Galectin-3 levels were found to be lower in patients with stable COPD group according to the control group. In addition, galactin-3 levels were found to be lower in COPD exacerbation group according to both Stable COPD group and control group. Although a certain threshold value was found in this study, more studies are needed to determine this threshold value more precisely. However, it is clear that these data are promising.