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Endothelin-1 (ET-1) has been implicated in the development of post–heart transplantation (HT) cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV), but has not been well studied in humans.

In 90 HT patients, plasma ET-1 was measured within 8 weeks after HT (baseline) via a competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Three-dimensional volumetric intravascular ultrasound of the left anterior descending artery was performed at baseline and at 1 year. Accelerated CAV (lumen volume loss) was defined with the 75th percentile as a cutoff. Patients were followed beyond the first year after HT for late death or retransplantation. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve demonstrated that a baseline ET-1 concentration of 1.75 pg/mL provided the best accuracy for diagnosis of accelerated CAV at 1 year (area under the ROC curve 0.69, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.57–0.82; P = .007). In …