Clinical & Experimental Cardiology
Open Access

Abstract

Copeptin for Discriminating Two-Year Mortality in Heart Failure Patients with Moderate to Severe Systolic Dysfunction

João Silva Marques, Ana G. Almeida, Cláudio David, Henrique Luz-Rodrigues and António Nunes Diogo

Background: Patients with heart failure and impaired systolic function may have a highly variable clinical course that renders it difficult to assess the individual prognosis. We hypothesized that ejection fraction would incompletely characterize prognosis in systolic heart failure and that biomarkers would add significant information. This study addresses the specific question whether co-peptin may add value in the evaluation of two-year prognosis in heart failure patients with known systolic dysfunction.
Methods: Prospective observational cohort study in 37 patients with symptomatic chronic heart failure (classes II to IV of the NYHA classification) and moderate to severe left ventricular systolic dysfunction. We evaluated clinical, echo-cardiographic and laboratory predictors of 24-month mortality specifically assessing the role of co-peptin.
Results: Six patients (16%) died during the follow-up. Patients who died had significant higher prevalence of NYHA class IV heart failure, higher blood osmolality and higher levels of NT-proBNP and co-peptin. In unvariable analysis NYHA functional class (p=0.013), serum creatinine (p=0.034), osmolality (p=0.009), NT-proBNP (p=0.013) and copeptin (p=0.003) were predictors of mortality at 24 months. Only copeptin (p=0.004) remained an independent predictor of death in Cox regression analysis.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that, in patients with heart failure and impaired left ventricular systolic function, copeptin level determination may be useful for predicting mortality at two years.