As shown in Table 6, very few studies have examined the association between CVD and circulating CTRP3 levels in a human patient population. Specifically, Wagner et al. 2016 (66) observed no association between the presence of CVD and CTRP3 levels among patients with symptoms requiring catherization for detecting the presence of coronary artery blockage. Whereas, Deng et al. 2015 (14), observed that both obesity and high blood pressure were associated with lower CTRP3 levels and Choi et al. 2014 (11) reported that CTRP3 concentrations in patients with acute coronary syndrome or stable angina pectoris were significantly decreased compared to control subjects. Further, CTRP3 concentrations have been shown to exhibit a significant negative association with many cardiometabolic risk factors (11, 83). As CTRP3 levels decrease with obesity, at least in men (66), the lower levels of CTRP3 may contribute to the impaired mitochondrial biogenesis in cardiac cells and increase the susceptibility/severity of an MI event. On the other hand, excessive sustained elevation of CTRP3 may also be detrimental to cardiovascular health as CTRP3 as promotes vascular and aortic ring calcification (90).
