Reader Comments

Year : 2011 | Volume:  43 | Issue Number:  5

1 Jignesh Ved, 10/8/2011 7:38:52 AM Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death worldwide and translational models for the evaluation of cardioprotection are an important tool for the identification of cardioprotective effects of compounds. Estimation of serum Cardiac-Troponin T is considered to be the gold standard biomarker for the diagnosis of myocardial injury. However, its quantitative estimation is not feasible at many institutes, and in clinical setting, diagnosis is made by a qualitative estimation of an elevation in its serum levels. A study was carried out in our institute, to evaluate the qualitative estimation of serum Cardiac Troponin T elevation (using Roche Cardiac Trop T test kit), for the diagnosis of myocardial injury in rats (with the approval of the institutional animal ethics committee and the scientific committee). The Trop T test kit, used in the study, identified an elevation in the serum c-TnT as either ≥ 0.08 ng/ml (Positive) or < 0.08 ng/ml (Negative). The Trop T positive and negative results were analyzed separately, and co-related with the respective observations for serum lactate dehydrogenase levels (quantitative data) and histopathological grading (ordinal data). Correlation between the Trop T test results and serum lactate dehydrogenase levels was calculated using the Biserial correlation coefficient (rb), whereas that between the Trop T test result and Histopathological grading was calculated using Rank-biserial correlation coefficient, or Somer’s D (rrb). Our study results were suggestive of positive correlations between the variables, indicating that the qualitative estimation of serum c-TnT is a valid and a useful tool for the biochemical estimation of myocardial injury in rats.