Mediators of Inflammation

Research Article

The Role of Angiogenesis Factors in the Formation of Vascular Changes in Scleroderma by Assessment of the Concentrations of VEGF and sVEGFR2 in Blood Serum and Tear Fluid

Table 4

Comparison of VEGF parameters between experimental subgroups and a control group.


Parameter	Group			level
Parameter	lSSc ()	dSSc ()	Control ()	level

Serum VEGF (pg/ml) ()	384.76 (467.19)	269.30 (218.03)	197.737 (155.04)	0.7348
Serum sVEGFR-2 (pg/ml) ()	10073.03 (3014.4329)	10405.94 (1052.3658)	9110.125 (2858.61)	0.2474
Serum VEGF/sVEGFR-2 ()	0.1032 (0.2898)	0.0260 (0.0226)	0.0350 (0.0752)	0.9515
VEGF in tears (pg/ml) ()	382.86 (672.46)	87.06 (109.45)	352.135 (135.25)	<0.001^a
sVEGFR-2 in tears (pg/ml) ()	72.68 (61.71)	119.30 (83.35)	8274.653 (11033.51)	<0.001^b
VEGF/sVEGFR-2 in tears ()	1.1906 (0.5792)	1.0344 (0.9953)	0.2391 (0.3418)	<0.001^c

^a,bSignificantly lower values of tears VEGF parameters in the lSSc and dSSc subgroups in comparison to a control group according to post hoc analysis of the Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA by ranks. ^cSignificantly higher coefficient of tears VEGF parameters in the lSSc subgroup in comparison to a control group according to post hoc analysis of the Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA by ranks. Abbreviations: VEGF: vascular endothelial growth factor; sVEGFR-2: soluble form of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2; lSSc: limited systemic sclerosis; dSSc: diffuse systemic sclerosis; SD: standard deviation.