The variation in high sensitive cardiac troponin concentration during haemodialysis treatment is not similar to the biological variation observed in stable end stage renal disease patients.
Cardiovascular mortality is high in end stage renal disease (ESRD). This study aimed to: (1) calculate within-week within- and between-subject biological variation (CVI and CVG) for hs-cTn in ESRD; (2) determine the magnitude of hs-cTn concentration changes during haemodialysis (HD) treatment; and (3) compare the CVI and CVG to the within and between-subject variation of cTn concentration changes during HD treatments (CVDIFF-I and CVDIFF-G). Serum samples were collected from 20 patients before and after 10 consecutive HD treatments. cTn were measured using the hs-cTnT (Roche Diagnostics) and the hs-cTnI (Abbott Diagnostics). The CVA, CVI, CVG, CVDIFF-I and CVDIFF-G, were estimated using nested ANOVA. The within-week data showed hs-cTnT CVA, CVI and CVG of 1.6, 7.3 and 94.4%. Reference change values (RCV) were estimated to -18.7-23.0%. The Index of individuality (II) was 0.08. Corresponding values for hs-cTnI were 5.3, 13.2 and 142.4%, whilst the RCV was -32.5-48.2% and the II was 0.10. The mean concentration of cTn decreased by -6.4% (hs-cTnT) and -7.6% (hs-cTnI) during HD treatment. The CVDIFF-I and CVDIFF-G was 4.2 and 6.3% for hs-cTnT, and 10.7 and 9.4% for hs-cTnI. The RCVDIFF was -18.2-5.4% (hs-cTnT) and -39.0-23.8% (hs-cTnI), respectively, and the IIDIFF-values were 0.7 and 1.3. The CVI and CVG are similar to earlier findings. Mean hs-cTn concentrations decreased during HD. The within-subject hs-cTn variation during HD is similar to the between-subject variation, i.e. determining a cut-off value for hs-cTn changes during HD may be useful.