In a new study, researchers found that in patients with heart failure, several known tumor markers can also be indicators of heart failure severity and progression.
The research was conducted by a team at the University of Groningen and elsewhere.
Previous research has shown that heart failure and cancer are conditions with a number of shared characteristics.
In the study, the team measured six markers that are indicators for various cancers—including ovarian, breast, lung, pancreatic, colorectal, and germ cell cancers—in 2,079 patients with heart failure.
They found that several of the markers correlated strongly with known heart failure markers and also predicted which patients were most likely to die prematurely.
The findings demonstrate that pathways that are sensed by tumor markers are apparently also dysregulated in heart failure.
The study shows that cancer and heart disease can be strongly related.
One author of the study is author Rudolf A. de Boer MD, Ph.D. from the University Medical Centre Groningen, in The Netherlands.
The study is published in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
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