title: The potential of circulating endothelial progenitor cells to form colonies is inversely proportional to total vascular risk score in patients with coronary artery disease.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The present study correlated the functional ability of culture-enriched EPCs to form colonies (EPC-CFUs), with risk factors and severity of CAD.
  
  
  METHODS
  Blood mononuclear cells from healthy controls (n = 16) and patients with CAD (n =35) were cultured for seven days for the formation of EPC-CFUs. After the characterization of EPCs, the number of EPC-clusters were compared in the study groups and correlated with the presence or absence of individual CAD risk factors, total vascular risk score (TVRS) and the severity of CAD in patients with CAD by Student's 't' test and regression analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  As compared to the patients, the controls showed significantly greater formation of EPC-CFUs. Patients with hypertension and smoking had significant reduction in the number of EPC-CFUs as compared to patients without these risk factors (p < 0.05). A negative correlation between TVRS and number of EPC-CFUs (r = -0.74, p < 0.05) and also between number of stenosing coronary arteries and EPC-CFUs (r = -0.42, p = 0.05) were observed. On multivariate analysis, however, only TVRS appeared to be a significant predictor of reduced formation of EPC-CFUs.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The present study suggests that more is the number of CAD risk factors, lesser is the formation of EPC-clusters in culture.
authors.affiliation: Division of Cellular and Molecular Cardiology and Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, India.
authors.forename: Savneet
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kaur
authors.forename: Karunakaran
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jayakumar
authors.forename: Chandrasekharan C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Kartha
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000503:physiopathology*; D042783:Endothelial Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012307:Risk Factors; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology*