Association between inflammatory biomarkers and venous thromboembolism: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundVenous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common thrombotic vascular disease that has a significant impact on people's well-being and quality of life. A plethora of clinical studies explore the relationship between inflammatory biomarkers and VTE but yield conflicting results. This article proposed to pool these studies to draw a more convincing conclusion.MethodsWe searched several databases for studies before April 2023. Available data was processed using Stata software (version 15.0 SE) and R (version 4.1.2). This meta-analysis has been registered in PROSPERO (CRD42022321815). The VTE in this review encompassed pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, and cerebral venous thrombosis.ResultsA total of 25 articles were finally involved in this study. Our results revealed that higher levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP, MD, 0.63, 95%CI, 0.21-1.05) and C-reactive protein (CRP)> 3ug/ml (OR, 1.52, 95%CI, 1.18-1.96) might be regarded as risk factors for future VTE occurrence. The elevated levels of monocyte (MD, 0.03, 95%CI, 0.00-0.05), hs-CRP (0.85, 0.61-1.08), CRP (0.66, 0.20-1.13) and IL-6 (0.47, 0.25-0.70) might represent the previous VTE; a series of markers such as white blood cell (1.43, 0.88-1.98), neutrophil (1.79, 1.02-2.56), monocyte (0.17, 0.14-0.21), hs-CRP (3.72, 1.45-5.99), IL-6 (5.99, 4.52-7.46), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (33.1, 24.45-41.78) and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (1.34, 0.95-1.73) increased during the acute phase of VTE.ConclusionsIn general, activated inflammatory biomarkers might not only be correlated with an increased risk of VTE, but may also give a hint of the occurrence of VTE in clinical settings.