Prognostic potential of midregional pro-adrenomedullin following decompensation for systolic heart failure: comparison with cardiac natriuretic peptides.

AIMS: Whereas guidelines recommend the routine use of natriuretic peptides (NPs) in heart failure (HF) care, the clinical relevance and prognostic potential of midregional pro-adrenomedullin (MR-proADM) is less well established. We aimed to compare the prognostic potential of MR-proADM after acute decompensation for systolic HF with that of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and midregional pro-atrial NP (MR-proANP), to investigate the significance of high/rising MR-proADM, and to evaluate the incremental prognostic yield of repeat measurements.

METHODS AND RESULTS: The Interdisciplinary Network Heart Failure (INH) programme enrolled patients hospitalized for acute systolic HF and followed them for 18 months (100% complete). Of 1022 INH participants, 917 (68 ± 12 years, 28% female) who had biomaterials available were enrolled. High MR-proADM was associated with more impaired left ventricular function, higher comorbidity burden, lower doses of HF medications, and lower likelihood of left ventricular reverse remodelling. Compared with NPs, MR-proADM had superior prognostic significance (concordance index 0.72 for all-cause mortality), improved Cox regression models including NPs (P < 0.001), and was the only biomarker also predicting non-cardiac death (hazard ratio 1.8 vs. 1.0). In the setting of low NPs, patients with high MR-proADM experienced non-cardiac death more often. Six month MR-proADM enhanced models including baseline MR-proADM (P < 0.001) for prediction of all-cause death (net reclassification index: 0.48, 95% confidence interval 0.19-0.78).

CONCLUSION: MR-proADM was found to correlate with the global disease burden in HF and proved a potent prognostic indicator, capturing the risk for both cardiac and non-cardiac death. Serial MR-proADM measurements further enhanced risk assessment, thus facilitating substantial reclassification.