Application of a High-Sensitivity Cardiac Troponin I Assay to a Health Screen Cohort of Young Asian Women and Association with Cardiovascular Risk Factors

To the Editor:The Global Task Force for the Universal Definition of Myocardial Infarction and the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry recommend the 99th percentile of cardiac troponin as a diagnostic threshold, provided that assay precision can be demonstrated to have a CV of ≤10% at this concentration (1). To determine the 99th percentile, we applied a high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I (hscTnI) assay (Abbott Diagnostics) to an analysis of a cohort of young, apparently healthy Asian women with low cardiovascular risk, and correlated this result with demographic and clinical characteristics to identify factors associated with higher cTnI concentrations.The cohort was obtained from our hospital staff health-screening program. Fasting serum samples were stored at −70 °C for up to 6 months until analysis. Nonpregnant women 20–65 years of age with no self-reported personal history of heart disease, diabetes, or hypertension were selected for analysis of cTnI concentrations with the Abbott ARCHITECT i 4000 analyzer and a premarket prototype hscTnI assay. Institutional review board approval was obtained for this study (DSRB/2011/01931).SPSS version 19 (SPSS/IBM) was used for statistical analyses. We …