Researchers from the University of Oslo (UiO) have been studying whether biomarkers can improve diagnostic methods for heart failure, which is a major cause of death globally.
Heart failure occurs when the heart can’t pump enough blood and oxygen to support other body organs.
Types of Heart Failure
There are two distinct types of heart failure: heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).
In HFrEF, the heart muscle weakens, reducing its ability to pump blood. Recent advances in medicine have improved diagnosis and treatment for this type.
However, the understanding of HFpEF, where the heart loses its ability to relax normally due to a stiff heart muscle, is limited. HFpEF accounts for about half of all heart failure patients and is increasing in prevalence.
“All of the medical advances in how we diagnose and treat heart failure patients work for one form of heart failure, but not necessarily for this new one,” explains Gustavo da Silva, a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Experimental Medical Research at the Institute of Clinical Medicine.
Biomarkers for Heart Failure
Da Silva and his team, including Ph.D. student Reza Parvan, have been researching HFpEF with a specific focus on biomarkers in the blood.
They have identified a panel of biomarkers that can differentiate between the two types of heart failure.
Biomarkers are biological indicators that can be measured or detected in body fluids or cells and can provide information about an underlying condition or disease.
Towards a New Diagnostic Tool
Da Silva’s team screened nearly 2,000 previous studies and included 45 of them in a meta-analysis, resulting in a dataset of 3,464 patients and 2,666 healthy individuals.
They identified biomarkers that could differentiate between the two types of heart failure.
“While there is a good biomarker in the blood for diagnosing HFrEF patients, there’s none available for clinical use or as part of the diagnostics guidelines for the other type of heart failure,” da Silva noted.
“We have now identified biomarkers that can distinguish between the two types of heart failure.”
Prognosis and Future Research
However, these biomarkers have only been tested for diagnostic purposes, and it is currently unknown whether they can inform about the prognosis of heart failure patients. As such, further research is needed.
Parvan is conducting a follow-up study with the same patients and biomarkers to test their prognostic performance.
“The next step will be to perform clinical validation of these biomarkers by testing patients.
Eventually, we envision developing this further to screen heart failure patients at high risk in a fast, accurate, and inexpensive way,” da Silva concluded.
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For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about a new way to fight against heart failure, and results showing drinking coffee may help reduce heart failure risk.
The study was published in the European Journal of Heart Failure.
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