2014_11_20_CIE_investigacion_osteoprotegerina

The doctoral thesis carried out by the researcher of the School of Sciences of the University of Navarra Carmen Pérez de Ciriza has shown that patients with metabolic syndrome have an elevated level of osteprotegerin, a protein involved in bone modeling. Thus, in the future, this could become a marker for detecting patients at risk of suffering a cardiovascular event. 

"A patient with metabolic syndrome is one who presents several cardiovascular risk factors such as abdominal obesity, high blood pressure and high levels of triglycerides and glucose and low levels of HDL cholesterol. Thus, at my research we have observed that the more risk factors the patient presents, the higher the concentration of osteoprotegerin in circulation," explained the expert. Similarly, by studying each risk factor separately, it was seen that diabetic, obese and hypertensive patients had respectively higher concentrations of osteoprotegerin than those who did not suffer from any of these anomalies. 

The work also points out for the first time the conditions under which patient samples must be obtained and processed for the results to be comparable. "Until now, there has been no research that has been fixed in this respect, which has made it difficult to establish comparisons. In addition, nowadays the determinations of laboratory have been centralized so it is more necessary to know what are the best conditions for transporting, preserving and analyzing the samples."

Carmen Pérez de Ciriza, who holds a degree in Pharmacy, spent research at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, England, where she studied the presence of this protein at the cellular level as well as the variations that can be produced by mediators involved in metabolic syndrome.