High sensitivity cardiac troponin T in patients with immunoglobulin light chain amyloidosis

Copeptin testing in acute myocardial infarction: ready for routine use?

Suspected acute myocardial infarction is one of the leading causes of admission to emergency departments. In the last decade, biomarkers revolutionized the management of patients with suspected acute coronary syndromes. Besides their pivotal assistance in timely diagnosis, biomarkers provide additional information for risk stratification. Cardiac troponins I and T are the most sensitive and specific markers of acute myocardial injury. Nonetheless, in order to overcome the remaining limitations of these markers, novel candidate biomarkers sensitive to early stage of disease are being extensively investigated. Among them, copeptin, a stable peptide derived from the precursor of vasopressin, emerged as a promising biomarker for the evaluation of suspected acute myocardial infarction. In this review, we summarize the currently available evidence for the usefulness of copeptin in the diagnosis and risk stratification of patients with suspected acute myocardial infarction in comparison with routine biomarkers.

Renal risk and response in amyloidosis

In this issue of Blood, Palladini and colleagues address incidence of and risk factors for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and proffer a new renal response system for patients with amyloid light-chain (AL) amyloidosis using a test set of 461 patients from Pavia, Italy, and a validation set of 271 patients from Heidelberg, Germany. Validation of organ response criteria has trailed behind the progress made in the field of AL amyloidosis in diagnosis, prognosis, and hematologic response, but Palladini and colleagues' study helps breach this gap.

Pathophysiology and treatment of cardiac amyloidosis

Amyloid cardiomyopathy should be suspected in any patient who presents with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction. In patients with echocardiographic evidence of ventricular thickening and without a clear history of hypertension, infiltrative cardiomyopathy should be considered. If imaging suggests the presence of amyloid deposits, confirmation by biopsy is required, although endomyocardial biopsy is generally not necessary. Assessment of aspirated subcutaneous fat and bone-marrow biopsy samples verifies the diagnosis in 40-80% of patients, dependent on the type of amyloidosis. Mass spectroscopy can be used to determine the protein subunit and classify the disease as immunoglobulin light-chain amyloidosis or transthyretin-related amyloidosis associated with mutant or wild-type TTR (formerly known as familial amyloid cardiomyopathy and senile cardiac amyloidosis, respectively). In this Review, we discuss the characteristics of cardiac amyloidosis, and present a structured approach to both the assessment of patients and treatment with emerging therapies and organ transplantation.

Prognostic value of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T in patients with endomyocardial-biopsy proven cardiac amyloidosis

OBJECTIVE

To investigate prognostic predictors of long-term survival of patients with cardiac amyloidosis (CA), and to determine predictive value of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) in CA patients.

METHODS

We recruited 102 consecutive CA cases and followed these patients for 5 years. We described their clinical characteristics at presentation and used a new, high-sensitivity assay to determine the concentration of cTnT in plasma samples from these patients.

RESULTS

The patients with poor prognosis showed older age (56 ± 12 years vs. 50 ± 15 years, P = 0.022), higher incidences of heart failure (36.92% vs. 16.22%, P = 0.041), pericardial effusion (60.00% vs. 35.14%, P = 0.023), greater thickness of interventricular septum (IVS) (15 ± 4 mm vs. 13 ± 4 mm, P = 0.034), higher level of hs-cTnT (0.186 ± 0.249 ng/mL vs. 0.044 ± 0.055 ng/mL, P = 0.001) and higher NT-proBNP (N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide) levels (11,742 ± 10,464 pg/mL vs. 6,031 ± 7,458 pg/mL, P = 0.006). At multivariate Cox regression analysis, heart failure (HR: 1.78, 95%CI: 1.09-2.92, P = 0.021), greater wall thickness of IVS (HR: 1.44, 95%CI: 1.04-3.01, P = 0.0375) and higher hs-cTnT level (HR: 6.16, 95%CI: 2.20-17.24, P = 0.001) at enrollment emerged as independent predictors of all-cause mortality.

CONCLUSIONS

We showed that hs-cTnT is associated with a very ominous prognosis, and it is also the strongest predictor of all-cause mortality in multivariate analysis. Examination of hs-cTnT concentrations provides valuable prognostic information concerning long-term outcomes.