Relationship between autophagy and complete blood count in patient with acute myocardial infarction

Autophagy is a self-protective mechanism of living cells or organisms under various stress conditions. In this study level of autophagy enzyme in patients with coronary artery disease are measured. Then we investigated to effects of autophagy on the hematologic parameters. 66 patients were included in our study. Participants were separated 2 groups: Group 1- patients with acute myocardial infarction (n=36); and Group 2- normal controls patients (n=30). Blood samples of all patients were collected during coronary angiography process. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit for autophagy related protein 5(ATG5) in the plasma was studied for these two groups of blood sample. Then autophagy level and complete blood count were compared. Age, gender, prevalence of diabetes mellitus, body-mass-index (BMI) and dyslipidemia were similar between the groups. Autophagy levels are significantly different between the groups(11.7±3.4 ng/ml; ; 7.5±3ng/ml ; p < 0.001, respectively). Significant positive correlations were found between level of autophagy and white blood cell count (r = 0.491, p < 0.001), neutrophil /lymphocyte ratio ( r=0.287 , p=0.019) . Significant negative correlations were found between level of autophagy and ejection fraction (r = -0.427, p < 0.001 ). In the present study, the autophagy levels were higher in the patients with coronary artery disease than healthy controls. Serum autophagy levels demonstrated a significant positive correlation with white blood cell count and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio .An increased autophagy level may be considered as an important activator and marker of the atherosclerotic inflammatory process in CAD.