Sex differences in plaque characteristics of fractional flow reserve-negative non-culprit lesions after myocardial infarction

Abstract

Background and aims: Recurrent events after myocardial infarction (MI) are common and often originate from native non-culprit (NC) lesions that are non-flow limiting. These lesions consequently pose as targets to improve long-term outcome. It is, however, largely unknown whether these lesions differ between sexes. The aim of this study was to assess such potential differences.

Methods: From the PECTUS-obs study, we assessed sex-related differences in plaque characteristics of fractional flow reserve (FFR)-negative intermediate NC lesions in 420 MI-patients.

Results: Among the included patients, 80 (19.1 %) were female and 340 (80.9 %) male. Women were older and more frequently had hypertension and diabetes. In total, 494 NC lesions were analyzed. After adjustment for clinical characteristics and accounting for within-patients clustering, lesion length was longer in female patients (20.8 ± 10.0 vs 18.3 ± 8.5 mm, p = 0.048) and minimum lumen area (2.30 ± 1.42 vs 2.78 ± 1.54 mm², p < 0.001) and minimum lumen diameter (1.39 ± 0.45 vs 1.54 ± 0.44 mm, p < 0.001) were smaller. The minimum fibrous cap thickness was smaller among females (96 ± 53 vs 112 ± 72 μm, p = 0.025), with more lesions harboring a thin cap fibroatheroma (39.3 % vs 24.9 %, p < 0.001). Major adverse cardiovascular events at two years occurred in 6.3 % of female patients and 11.8 % of male patients (p = 0.15).

Conclusions: FFR-negative NC lesions after MI harbored more high-risk plaque features in female patients. Although this did not translate into an excess of recurrent events in female patients in this modestly sized cohort, it remains to be investigated whether this difference affects clinical outcome.

Keywords: Atherosclerosis; High-risk plaque; Myocardial infarction; Non-culprit; Optical coherence tomography (OCT); Sex; Thin-cap fibroatheroma (TCFA).