Association Between Cardiac Valvular Calcification and Serum Fetuin-A Levels in Renal Transplant Recipients

Background. The presence of cardiac valvular calcification in patients with chronic kidney disease has become important. We aimed to evaluate the prevalence of cardiac valvular calcification and its association with serum Fetuin-A levels in kidney transplant recipients. Methods. The cardiac valvular calcification was assessed by echocardiography in 89 kidney transplant recipients. Serum Fetuin-A levels were measured by use of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method. Results. Patients were divided into 3 groups: patients without cardiac valvular calcification (n = 14), patients with aortic valve calcification (n = 51), and patients with both aortic and mitral valve calcification (n = 24). Aortic calcification area and number of aortic calcifications were significantly increased in the group with aortic and mitral calcification group compared with the other two groups. These two parameters were also significantly increased in patients with cardiac valvular calcification compared with patients without cardiac valvular calcification. Serum Fetuin-A levels were significantly increased in patients with aortic valve calcification compared with the other two groups, whereas there were no significant differences between these two groups. Serum Fetuin-A levels were positively correlated with blood urea nitrogen level (r = .241, P = .025) and serum creatinine level (r = .262, P = .014), whereas it was negatively correlated with serum phosphorus level (r = .409, P < .001). Conclusions. Serum Fetuin-A levels can be taken into consideration for the assessment of patients in terms of cardiac valvular calcification, depending on the relationship between serum Fetuin-A levels and cardiac valvular calcification during follow-up after kidney transplantation.