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Blood Test Predicts Heart Problems

Posted: Thursday, January 25, 2007

A simple blood test might one day help doctors determine which heart disease patients need more aggressive treatment.

Research led by investigators from the University of California, San Francisco, reveals people with higher levels of NT pro-BNP are significantly more likely to either die or have another cardiac event than people with lower levels of the cardiac biomarker.

NT pro-BNP is a chemical released by cells in the heart. When too much pressure is placed on these cells, they release more of the chemical. Scientists wanted to know how well measurements of NT pro-BNP would predict worsening heart problems or death.

The scientists compared nearly 1,000 coronary heart disease (CHD) patients who had recently been hospitalized with a heart problem and classified them according to their NT pro-BNP levels. Those with the highest levels had an eight-times higher rate of heart disease events than those with the lowest levels, who had only about a 2 percent to 3 percent event rate.

NT pro-BNP was most strongly associated with heart failure, a condition the researchers note can be more effectively treated if caught in its earliest stages.

"Use of a simple blood test for NT-proBNP level may help guide risk stratification and may focus efforts toward preventing adverse cardiovascular events in high-risk patients with stable CHD," write the authors.

In an accompanying editorial, Marvin A. Konstam, M.D., from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, writes peptides like NT pro-BNP don't actually cause heart disease, like high cholesterol levels and high blood pressure. He writes testing for and treating peptide levels might not have the same effect as testing for and treating high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

Source: Diabetes In Control: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2007;297:169-176