Serum Biomarkers and Classification and Regression Trees Can Discriminate Symptomatic from Asymptomatic Carotid Artery Disease Patients

Objective To assess biomarkers between symptomatic and asymptomatic patients, and to construct a classification and regression tree (CART) algorithm for their discrimination. Patients and Methods 136 patients were enrolled. They were symptomatic (high risk) ( N = 82, stenosis degree ≥ 50%, proven to be responsible for ischemic stroke the last six months) and asymptomatic (low risk) ( N = 54, stenosis degree ≤ 50%). Levels of fibrinogen, matrix metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1), tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1), soluble intercellular adhesion molecule (SiCAM), soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule (SvCAM), adiponectin and insulin were measured on a Luminex 3D platform and their differences were evaluated; subsequently, a CART model was created and evaluated. Results All measured biomarkers, except adiponectin, had significantly higher levels in symptomatic patients. The constructed CART prognostic model had 97.6% discrimination accuracy on symptomatic patients and 79.6% on asymptomatic, while the overall accuracy was 90.4%. Moreover, the population was split into training and test sets for CART validation. Conclusion Significant differences were found in the biomarkers between symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. The CART model proved to be a simple decision-making algorithm linked with risk probabilities and provided evidence to identify and, therefore, treat patients being at high risk for cardiovascular disease.