Proteins and pathways in atrial fibrillation and atrial cardiomyopathy underlying cryptogenic stroke.

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one of the most prevalent causes of cryptogenic stroke. Also, apart from AF itself, structural and remodelling changes in the atria might be an underlying cause of cryptogenic stroke. We aimed to discover circulating proteins and reveal pathways altered in AF and atrial cardiomyopathy, measured by left atrial volume index (LAVI) and peak atrial longitudinal strain (PALS), in patients with cryptogenic stroke.

Methods: An aptamer array (including 1310 proteins) was measured in the blood of 20 cryptogenic stroke patients monitored during 28 days with a Holter device as a case-control study of the Crypto-AF cohort. Protein levels were compared between patients with (n = 10) and without AF (n = 10) after stroke, and the best candidates were tested in 111 patients from the same cohort (44 patients with AF and 67 without AF). In addition, in the first 20 patients, proteins were explored according to PALS and LAVI values.

Results: Forty-six proteins were differentially expressed in AF cases. Of those, four proteins were tested in a larger sample size. Only DPP7, presenting lower levels in AF patients, was further validated. Fifty-seven proteins correlated with LAVI, and 270 correlated with PALS. NT-proBNP was common in all the discovery analyses performed. Interestingly, many proteins and pathways were altered in patients with low PALS.

Conclusions: Multiple proteins and pathways related to AF and atrial cardiomyopathy have been revealed. The role of DPP7 as a biomarker for stroke aetiology should be further explored. Moreover, the present study may be considered hypothesis-generating.