Doctors at Methodist Hospital Center, Baylor College create new method of predicting heart failure

The most widely used models for predicting heart failure rely on a complex combination of lifestyle, demographic and cardiovascular risk factor information.

But two doctors at The Methodist Hospital Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and the Baylor College of Medicine recently presented new data that shows two biomarkers can improve heart failure risk prediction as part of a simpler model, according to a Methodist Hospital System press release.

The presentation by Dr. Vijay Nambi and Dr. Christie Ballantyne was part of the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2012 in Los Angeles.

The doctors said their simpler model could use information from lab reports to assess heart failure risk, and could be useful to both patients and doctors.

Nambi and Ballantyne's model uses age, race and the blood concentrations of two blood biomarkers, troponin T and NT-proBNP, to show whether a patient is at elevated risk for heart failure, according to the release.

Applying the model to patient data from the ongoing Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, the researchers found their simple heart failure risk model was comparable to more complex models that take into account age, race, systolic blood pressure, antihypertensive medication use, smoking or former smoking, diabetes, body-mass index, prevalent coronary heart disease and heart rate.

The protein troponin T is part of the troponin complex and is traditionally used in the diagnosis of heart attacks. NT-proBNP is an inactive peptide fragment left over from the production of brain natriuretic peptide, a small neuropeptide hormone valuable in diagnosing recent and ongoing congestive heart failure. The researchers used both these markers to show the likelihood of future heart failure more than 10 years down the road, thereby understanding which individuals among a general population are at the highest risk of heart failure. The doctors showed that adding these biomarkers to the existing models resulted in the best risk prediction models.

The news release stresses that this is preliminary data. The ARIC study is supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health.

For more information, please contact David Bricker, The Methodist Hospital System, at 832-667-5811 or dmbricker@tmhs.org, or Graciela Gutierrez, Baylor College of Medicine, at 713-798-7841 or ggutierr@bcm.edu.

Methodist Willowbrook Hospital in Tomball is part of the Methodist Health System.