Artifactual elevation of plasma sCD40L by residual platelets in patients with coronary artery disease

摘要

Platelet activation is a feature of many cardiovascular disease (CVD) states [1 ]. Soluble CD40 ligand (sCD40L) is widely regarded as a marker of platelet activation and has been extensively studied as a potential biomarker in subjects with CVDs. However, the reported associations between sCD40L and CVD, or cardiovascular risk in healthy subjects, are inconsistent [2-7]. Incomplete removal of platelets from plasma samples in clinical research may be undesirable, yet there is sparse literature describing the effect of platelet contamination on biomarker measurement in clinical studies. It is common practice in clinical studies to transfer and centrifuge blood samples at refrigerated conditions. However, it is not known how temperature during blood sample processing alters the residual platelet count in plasma samples.