Ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1 after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Background: We studied the prognostic ability of serum ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCH-L1) after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), compared to that of neuron-specific enolase (NSE).

Methods: In this post-hoc analysis of the FINNRESUSCI study, we measured serum concentrations of UCH-L1 in 249 OHCA patients treated in 21 Finnish intensive care units in 2010-2011. We evaluated the ability of UCH-L1 to predict unfavourable outcome at 12 months (defined as cerebral performance category 3-5) by assessing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), in comparison with NSE.

Results: The concentrations of UCH-L1 were higher in patients with unfavourable outcome than for those with favourable outcome: median concentration 10.8 ng/mL (interquartile range, 7.5-18.5 ng/mL) versus 7.8 ng/mL (5.9-11.8 ng/mL) at 24 h (p < .001), and 16.2 ng/mL (12.2-27.7 ng/mL) versus 11.5 ng/mL (9.0-17.2 ng/mL) (p < .001) at 48 h after OHCA. For UCH-L1 as a 12-month outcome predictor, the AUROC was 0.66 (95% confidence interval, 0.60-0.73) at 24 h and 0.66 (0.59-0.74) at 48 h. For NSE, the AUROC was 0.66 (0.59-0.73) at 24 h and 0.72 (0.65-0.80) at 48 h. The prognostic ability of UCH-L1 was not different from that of NSE at 24 h (p = .82) and at 48 h (p = .23).

Conclusion: Concentrations of UCH-L1 in serum were higher in patients with unfavourable outcome than in those with favourable outcome. However, the ability of UCH-L1 to predict unfavourable outcome after OHCA was only moderate and not superior to that of NSE.