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Letters to the Editor |
Department of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, Vienna Medical University, Waehringerguertel 18-20, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
Received 13 February 2008; accepted 14 February 2008.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +43 1 40400 5620/5630; fax: +43 1 40400 564. (Email: seyedhossein.aharinejad{at}meduniwien.ac.at).
Key Words: Matrix metalloproteinases • Serum • ELISA • Blood sampling procedure
We thank the Editor for giving us the opportunity to reply to Dr Jung's letter to the Editor [1].
We are aware of the important impact of blood sampling procedure in measuring circulating MMP and TIMP concentrations in peripheral blood. For this reason, we used a standardized protocol for serum sampling, defining the clotting time at 30 min following blood collection by venous puncture followed by centrifugation for 15 min at 1000 x g, storing serum samples at –80 °C prior to analysis. The implementation of these procedures in the study avoids increased MMP levels due to longer clotting times or varying sample preparation procedures. We agree that there might be some methodological concerns associated with the use of serum MMP levels from patients for analysis of correlation with clinical disease associated parameters. However, the primary aim of this study was to investigate whether measurement of serum protein markers is related to clinical conditions following cardiac transplantation and was not to evaluate the best methodological approach to be used in the laboratory. In this context, there are numerous recently published articles describing the use of serum MMP levels in patients and their potential correlation with clinical parameters [2–4]. To our understanding, the most important issue in this context is that the same method is used throughout the study to enable the correlation of serum protein markers with clinical parameters. Even in the case where using serum MMP measurements results in high background levels in serum due to the release of these factors during blood sample preparation, it does not matter whether the absolute marker levels are low or high. The key issue is whether the marker level in a patient can be clearly associated with a clinical parameter or disease. Of course, comparison of the results from different studies has to take into account the different methods used. In conclusion, we think that our study provides important findings on the relationship between MMP and TIMP serum levels in cardiac transplantation and, as we already stated in the article, further investigations are necessary for the implementation of our results in clinical practice.
References
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