Elevated Remnant Cholesterol is Associated with Adverse Cardiovascular Outcomes in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome.

Aims: This study aimed to investigate the association of elevated RC levels with adverse cardiovascular outcomes in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients with and without diabetes.

Methods: We analyzed data from 1716 patients with ACS undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention. RC was calculated as total cholesterol minus high-density lipoprotein cholesterol minus low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. RC ＞75th percentile of the cohort (＞0.79 mmol/L) was defined as abnormally elevated RC. Cox-regression models and Kaplan-Meier analyses were used to assess the relationship between RC ＞0.79 mmol/L and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE).

Results: During a median follow-up of 927 days, a total of 354 patients had at least one event. In the overall population, compared with those with RC ≤ 0.79 mmol/L, patients with RC ＞0.79 mmol/L had a significantly higher risk of MACE after adjustment for potential confounders (hazard ratio: 1.572, 95% confidence interval: 1.251-1.975, P＜0.001). In addition, RC ＞0.79 mmol/L was associated with an increased risk of MACE of 66.7% (P=0.001) and 50.1% (P=0.022) in the diabetic and non-diabetic subgroups (P for interaction=0.073), respectively. The addition of RC significantly improved the predictive ability of baseline models for MACE in diabetic patients (all P＜0.05), but not in non-diabetic patients (all P＞0.05).

Conclusion: Abnormally elevated RC was significantly associated with worse prognosis in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients with ACS; however, the prognostic value of RC might be superior among diabetic patients.