Non-cardiac Conditions Which Can Elevate The Serum Levels of sST2

摘要

Sir, I congratulate the authors Dattagupta A and Sathyamurthy I for the lucid presentation about the very important topic, sST2 current status in the article titled 'ST2: Current status'. In this article, they have mentioned that 'while ST2 is associated with allergic and immunologic diseases such as asthma, among normal subjects, sST2 was not found to be higher in them'. We wish to add some additional information regarding the non-cardiac conditions which can elevate the serum levels of sST2. These conditions are rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythe-matosus (SLE), macrophage activation syndrome, juvenile idio-pathic arthritis and bronchial asthma. Serum sST2 levels were found to be higher in patients of rheumatoid arthritis than in the healthy subjects. The levels of IL-33, sST2 and C-reactive proteins decreased after the conventional DMARD treatment. In the cases of SLE, serum sST2 levels were higher than healthy controls and showed the positive correlation with the disease activity (by using the SLEDAI index and serum anti-DNA antibody). Similarly, in the patients with macrophage activation syndrome and in juvenile idiopathic arthritis, the levels of sST2 were higher than those in healthy persons. In these cases, levels of sST2 correlated well with the activity and reduced during the phase of remission.