Serum Cardiac Troponin I Levels in Adults with Sickle Cell Disease Visiting the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract

Recurrent vaso-occlusive crisis and haemolysis normally affect the lifestyle of patients with sickle cell disease. This may occur for a few hours or some weeks, making many of them to require hospital admission and blood transfusion, with inevitable financial implications on care givers. Due to its tissue specificity, cardiac troponin I and T have been claimed to be important in detecting cardiac damage even in the presence of elevated total creatine kinase (CK) and CK-MB that can likely occur in exercise-induced skeletal muscle damage. The significance of cardiac assessment in sickle cell patients was emphasized in a previous report which showed that evidence of mortality related to cardiovascular causes was often encountered during autopsy. This study aimed at accessing serum cardiac Troponin I (cTnI) in adult patients with sickle cell disease at University College Hospital, Ibadan. After written consents were obtained, 131 individuals above 18 years were recruited, 95 of which were sickle cell disease subjects and 36 were non-sickle cell disease controls. Mean age was 35.4years±SD=7.54years with age range of 19 to 56years for the sickle celled subjects and 36.8years±SD=9.11years with age range of 19 to 58 years for controls. Male to female ratio was approximately 2:1 for control and 2.4 :1 for sickle cell subjects. A total of 4(4.2%) sickle cell patients had abnormal troponin I level. There was a significant difference in mean troponin I level between sickle cell subjects and control, but there was no significant association between troponin I and haematological parameters of the sickle cell patients. The likelihood of the sickle cell subjects developing crisis is low, but there was no significant association significant association between troponin I level in sickle cell subjects and their haematological parameters, while there was a significant difference in mean troponin I between Sickle cell subjects and non-Sickle cell controls.