• Göksel Tuzcu, Ali Uğur Uslu, Ayça Tuzcu, Rabia Aydoğan Baykara, Ahmet Omma, and Adem Küçük.
• Turk J Med Sci. 2019 Dec 16; 49 (6): 1599-1605.

Background/AimHuman endothelial cell-specific molecule-1 (endocan) is a marker of vascular endothelial dysfunction that may be used in the evaluation of inflammatory-associated atherosclerotic lesions. Endocan may be a marker for the evaluation of atherosclerosis and disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients.Materials And MethodsWe included 39 RA patients assessed according to the American College of Rheumatology/European League Against Rheumatology 2010 diagnostic criteria and recruited 30 age- and sex-matching healthy subjects for the control group.ResultsEndocan values were 14.11 ± 3.27 for the RA patients and 12.10 ± 2.92 for the controls. The endocan values of the patients were significantly higher than those of the control group (P = 0.009). In the correlation analysis, endocan showed a significantly positive correlation with disease activity score-28 (r = 0.386, P = 0.029) and carotid intima–media thickness (cIMT) (r = 0.419, P = 0.008). Linear regression analysis revealed that there was an independent relationship between endocan and cIMT (P = 0.029).ConclusionEndocan can be a marker for early atherosclerosis and disease activity in RA patients.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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