A Novel Circulating Biomarker for Congestive Heart Failure and Myocardial Infarction

University of Connecticut
posted on 08/08/2011

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Heart failure affects 5 million people in the U.S. alone and results in acute decompensation in about 550,000 patients each year. Many patients with heart failure remain unaware of their condition until acute decompensation occurs. Evidence suggests that a failing human heart releases the peptide, or protein fragment, identified as Caspase-3 P17. Studies in the laboratory of Dr. Bruce Liang have demonstrated that the level of this peptide can be detected in the blood of patients with any form of heart failure and increases in the blood of patients with acute heart failure. More recently, Dr. Liang and his colleagues have show that P17 is also released during myocardial infarction (MI).

Quantitation of the level of Caspase-3 P17 in the blood might be used by physicians in a variety of ways, such as: a) to identify patients with heart failure prior to manifesting symptoms; b) to verify whether a patient presenting symptoms consistent with heart failure indeed has heart failure or if the symptoms are unrelated to heart failure; c) to predict how patients with acute heart failure will do in the future; and d) to verify patients undergoing a myocardial infarction when clinical symptoms are ambiguous, perhaps in conjunction with other MI biomarkers.