Background
Dialysis patients are at increased risk of HF. However, diagnostic utility of NT-proBNP as a biomarker is decreased in patients on dialysis. GDF-15 and cNEP are biomarkers of distinct mechanisms that may contribute to HF pathophysiology in such cohorts. The aim of this study was to determine whether growth differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15) and circulating neprilysin (cNEP) improve the diagnosis of congestive heart failure (HF) in patients on dialysis.
Methods and results
We compared circulating concentrations of NT-proBNP, GDF-15, and cNEP along with cNEP activity in patients on chronic dialysis without (
n
= 80) and with HF (
n
= 73), as diagnosed by clinical parameters and post-dialysis echocardiography. We used correlation, linear and logistic regression as well as receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses. Compared to controls, patients with HF had higher median values of NT-proBNP (16,216 [interquartile range, IQR = 27739] vs. 2883 [5866] pg/mL,
p
< 0.001), GDF-15 (7512 [7084] vs. 6005 [4892] pg/mL,
p
= 0.014), but not cNEP (315 [107] vs. 318 [124] pg/mL,
p
= 0.818). Median cNEP activity was significantly lower in HF vs. controls (0.189 [0.223] vs. 0.257 [0.166] nmol/mL/min,
p
< 0.001). In ROC analyses, a multi-marker model combining clinical covariates, NT-proBNP, GDF-15, and cNEP activity demonstrated best discrimination of HF from controls (AUC = 0.902, 95% CI 0.857–0.947,
p
< 0.001 vs. base model AUC = 0.785).
Conclusion
We present novel comparative data on physiologically distinct circulating biomarkers for HF in patients on dialysis. cNEP activity but not concentration and GDF-15 provided incremental diagnostic information over clinical covariates and NT-proBNP and may aid in diagnosing HF in dialysis patients.
Graphic abstract
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1007/s00392-020-01597-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.