Utility of Amino-terminal Pro-brain Natriuretic Peptide, Galectin-3, and Apelin for the Evaluation of Patients with Acute Heart Failure

Objectives: This study sought to explore the role of new biomarkers in heart failure (HF).

Background: We investigated the utility of novel serum markers alone or together with natriuretic peptide testing for diagnosis and short-term prognosis estimation in subjects with acute HF.

Methods: Plasma levels of amino-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), apelin, and galectin-3 were measured in 599 patients presenting with dyspnea at the emergency department, of which 209 (35%) had acute HF.

Results: The NT-proBNP was superior to either apelin or galectin-3 for diagnosis of acute HF, although galectin-3 levels were significantly higher in subjects with HF compared with those without. Receiver operating characteristic analysis for mortality prediction showed that, for 60-day prognosis, galectin-3 had the greatest area under the curve (AUC) at 0.74 (p = 0.0001), whereas NT-proBNP and apelin had an AUC of 0.67 (p = 0.009) and 0.54 (p = 0.33). In a multivariate logistic regression analysis, an elevated level of galectin-3 was the best independent predictor of 60-day mortality (odds ratio 10.3, p < 0.01) or the combination of death/recurrent HF within 60 days (odds ratio 14.3, p < 0.001). The Kaplan-Meier analyses showed that the combination of an elevated galectin-3 with NT-proBNP was a better predictor of mortality than either of the 2 markers alone.

Conclusions: Our data show potential utility of galectin-3 as a useful marker for evaluation of patients with suspected or proven acute HF, whereas apelin measurement was not useful for these indications. Moreover, the combination of galectin-3 with NT-proBNP was the best predictor for prognosis in subjects with acute HF.