Cardiac Biomarkers for Early Detection of Cardiac Involvement in Children with Kawasaki Disease: A Cross Sectional Study

Background: kawasaki disease (kd) is one of the most prevalent vasculitis diseases in children and can bring about serious cardiovascular complications. early detection of cardiac involvement in kd can play an essential role in managing and preventing the cardiac sequels. we aimed to evaluate the applicability and diagnostic accuracy of cardiac biomarkers including cardiac troponin i (ctni), and n-terminal pro-brain natriuretic (nt-probnp) for early detection of cardiac involvement in children with kd. materials and methods in this cross section al study, 32 children with kd who were admitted to the c hildren's hospital of tabriz university of medical sciences, tabriz, iran, in a three year period, were consecutively included. transthoracic echocardiography was performed to evaluate cardiac involve ment. also, the serum levels of nt probnp and ctni were measured to evaluate their diagnostic accuracy. roc curve analysis was conducted to evaluate the discriminatory power of nt probnp for the diagnosis of cardiac involvement in kd and to determine the b est cut off point at which the sensitivity and specificity were optimal. results : of 32 enrolled patients, 4 (12.5%) had cardiac involvement including 3 patients with perivascular brightness of coronary arteries and one patient with small aneurysm of the coronary arteries. in all study patients, the ctni levels were lower than 0.35 ng/ml and the nt probnp measurement revealed an average of 678.5 pg/ml. children with cardiac involvement had significantly higher nt probnp (p= 0.001). both sensitivity and spe cificity of nt probnp at the optimum cut off point of 1354 pg/ml were 100 percent (auc=1.000, p=0.001). conclusion : unlike the ctni, our results support the applicability of nt probnp as an excellent objective test for early detection of cardiac involvemen t in children with kd.