Expression of TGF-β1 and VEGF in patients with Achilles tendon rupture and the clinical efficacy

Expression of transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in patients with Achilles tendon rupture, and the predictive values and significance in clinical efficacy were explored. Forty-two patients with Achilles tendon rupture, surgically treated in the First Affiliated Hospital of University of South China, were selected and the clinical efficacy was evaluated based on the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) scoring system. RT-qPCR was adopted to detect the expression of serum TGF-β1 and VEGF in the patients before and after treatment, and Spearman's correlation was used to analyze the correlation of TGF-β1 and VEGF with the clinical efficacy after treatment. Patients were divided into an excellent efficacy group and a good/general efficacy group according to the predictive efficacy. In the two groups, the expression levels of TGF-β1 and VEGF before treatment were observed, and the predictive values of TGF-β1 and VEGF in clinical efficacy using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were obtained. The 42 patients showed significantly higher expression of TGF-β1 and VEGF at 3 months after treatment, and significantly decreased expression at 6 months after treatment, compared to the results before treatment (both P<0.001). After treatment, the efficacy was excellent in 11 patients, good in 25 and general in 6. Spearman's correlation analysis revealed that the expression of TGF-β1 and VEGF decreased with the improvement of efficacy after treatment (P<0.001), and the excellent efficacy group showed significantly lower expression of TGF-β1 and VEGF than that in the good/general efficacy group (P<0.01). Moreover, according to ROC curves, the areas under the curves (AUCs) of TGF-β1 and VEGF were 0.651 and 0.645, respectively. In conclusion, TGF-β1 and VEGF can be considered as observational indexes and predictors for clinical efficacy in patients with Achilles tendon rupture, before and after treatment.