Biomarkers for chronic heart failure.

Cardiac biomarkers play an important role in and provide better pathophysiological understanding of chronic heart failure (CHF). Natriuretic peptides, especially B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and N-terminal proBNP (NT-proBNP), were found to be useful in the diagnostic assessment and prognostic stratification of patients with CHF. However, they fail to fulfill all the criteria of an ideal biomarker. Currently, we still do not have a single biomarker or a combination of biomarkers to answer all the clinically relevant questions in CHF. Consequently, some widely available biomarkers might have been overlooked in the field of heart failure. This review discusses several biomarkers, and speculates on the possible roles of combining two or more of them. In this respect, hemoglobin, cholesterol, uric acid, and recently identified proteins may prove to be relevant to the field of CHF. Lastly, we anticipate the potential of biomarkers in a variety of chronic diseases with similar pathophysiology.