Background: The main purpose of this study was to determine sVAP-1 levels in patients with moderate and severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) compared with healthy controls, and further determine the relationship between sVAP-1 concentration and biomarkers of vascular endothelial dysfunction (ED), including adropin and inflammatory factors.Methods: In this study, we included 50 male patients with OSA (25 moderate and 25 severe) and 20 age- and sex-matched control subjects. The OSA patients

more »

... ent polysomnography and all subjects underwent fasting sampling of peripheral blood for laboratory analyses.Results: Serum sVAP-1 levels and inflammatory biomarkers (IL-6, TNF-α, hsCRP) were significantly higher in patients with severe OSA in comparison with the moderate OSA and control groups, whereas plasma adropin levels presented a completely reverse trend. Moreover, sVAP-1 levels were in significant positive correlation with levels of AHI, ODI, TNF-α, IL-6 and hsCRP. However, it was significantly negative correlated with adropin levels. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that AUC for sVAP-1levels in predicting OSA was 0.876 (P <.001,95% CI 0.784−0.968). Serum sVAP-1 cutoff value more than 445.5ng/mL provided 88% sensitivity and 80% specificity for the detection of OSA status. A multivariate regression analysis showed that sVAP-1 remained as a significant positive predictor of severe OSA status.Conclusions: Serum sVAP-1 concentration significantly correlates with indices of OSA severity and biomarkers of ED, suggesting that sVAP-1 plays a vital role in the pathophysiology of ED-related diseases.