Effects of Drug‐Coated Balloons on Inflammatory Cytokines After Interventional Therapy for Coronary Artery Calcification.

Objective: To investigate the effects of a drug‐coated balloon (DCB) on inflammatory cytokines in patients with coronary artery calcification (CAC) after interventional therapy. Methods: This study included 58 patients with coronary heart disease who underwent coronary angiography (CAG) from October 2020 to September 2021. Patients were divided into CAC and non‐CAC groups, and a DCB was used to intervene in the target lesions. Ten‐milliliter preoperative and postoperative blood samples were drawn from the coronary lesions in both groups to detect the expression of serum interleukin‐6 (IL‐6), tumor necrosis factor‐alpha (TNF‐α), and intercellular adhesion molecule‐1 (ICAM‐1). All patients were subjected to a 6‐month follow‐up to observe the incidence of major adverse cardiac events (MACEs). Results: No significant differences in baseline clinical data were found between the groups. Serum IL‐6, TNF‐α, and ICAM‐1 expressions in coronary blood samples immediately before DCB were not significantly different from those after DCB in all patients. After DCB, serum TNF‐α expression in the CAC group was significantly lower than that in the non‐CAC group (p < 0.05). In contrast, no significant difference in serum IL‐6 and ICAM‐1 expression was found between the groups. During the 6‐month follow‐up, no significant difference in the incidence of MACE was found between both groups. Conclusions: DCB reduced the expression of inflammatory cytokine TNF‐α in CAC, which may be one of the key mechanisms underlying the treatment of CAC by DCB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]