Peripheral levels of circulating progenitor cells correlate with area at risk and microvascular obstruction at cardiac magnetic resonance imaging in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction

Methods Fifteen STEMI patients undergoing successful primary percutaneous coronary intervention (pPCI) were included. Peripheral vein blood samples were drawn at 48 hours after pPCI to measure CPC (CD34+/ KDR +/CD45-). At 2-7 days after pPCI all patients underwent CMR assessment with SSFP, T2-STIR, first-pass perfusion and late gadolinium-enhancement imaging. Quantitative T2 area-at-risk (AAR, % of LV volume), infarct size (IS, % of LV volume), myocardial salvage (MS, calculated as AAR-IS) were calculated. Microvascular obstruction (MVO) was assessed both as perfusion defect score on first-pass imaging (PD, expressed as a sum of a 0 to 3 scoring for each of 16 LV segments) or as MVO score in the late enhancement images. Results CPC levels (expressed as %, number of cells per total number of cytometric events) were more strongly related to extent of AAR (rho=0.72, p=0.002) than to IS (rho=0.5, p=0.06), but did not correlate to MS (rho=0.002, p=0.9). Moreover, CPC were related to PD score (rho=0.54, p=0.03) but not to MVO score (rho=0.3, p=0.2).