Ferreira António Miguel, Mendes Miguel, Ventosa António, Aguiar Carlos T, Ferreira Jorge, Figueira João M, Silva José A
Int J Cardiol. 2008 Oct 30;130(1):103-5. doi: 10.1016/j.ijcard.2007.07.015. Epub 2007 Aug 9.
Recent studies have shown that obesity is an independent predictor of lower N-terminal pro-BNP (NT-proBNP) levels and raised concerns about the validity of this biomarker in obese subjects. We evaluated the influence of obesity (body mass index>or=30 kg/m(2)) on the correlation between exercise capacity and serum NT-proBNP levels in 100 chronic heart failure (CHF) patients referred for cardiopulmonary exercise testing. Circulating NT-proBNP levels correlated well with lean body mass-adjusted peak oxygen consumption (VO(2)) in the entire cohort (R=-0.72, p<0.001) and in the obese (R=-0.71, p<0.001) and non-obese (R=-0.72, p<0.001) subgroups. There was no significant difference between the correlation coefficients of the two subgroups (p=0.934). In conclusion NT-proBNP levels predict exercise capacity in CHF patients irrespective of the presence of obesity.
