Effects of Drug-Coated Balloons on Inflammatory Cytokines After Interventional Therapy for Coronary Artery Calcification

Objective: To investigate the effects of a drug-coated balloon (DCB) on inflammatory cytokines in patients with coronary artery calcification (CAC) after interventional therapy.

Methods: This study included 58 patients with coronary heart disease who underwent coronary angiography (CAG) from October 2020 to September 2021. Patients were divided into CAC and non-CAC groups, and a DCB was used to intervene in the target lesions. Ten-milliliter preoperative and postoperative blood samples were drawn from the coronary lesions in both groups to detect the expression of serum interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1). All patients were subjected to a 6-month follow-up to observe the incidence of major adverse cardiac events (MACEs).

Results: No significant differences in baseline clinical data were found between the groups. Serum IL-6, TNF-α, and ICAM-1 expressions in coronary blood samples immediately before DCB were not significantly different from those after DCB in all patients. After DCB, serum TNF-α expression in the CAC group was significantly lower than that in the non-CAC group (p < 0.05). In contrast, no significant difference in serum IL-6 and ICAM-1 expression was found between the groups. During the 6-month follow-up, no significant difference in the incidence of MACE was found between both groups.

Conclusions: DCB reduced the expression of inflammatory cytokine TNF-α in CAC, which may be one of the key mechanisms underlying the treatment of CAC by DCB.