Reliability of N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide assay in diagnosis of heart failure: cohort study in representative and high risk community populations

What Was Tested

Researchers studied BNP (Nesiritide) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

To investigate the performance of a novel assay for N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in diagnosing heart failure in various randomly selected general and high risk community populations.

Who Took Part

The study group was 591 patients.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were older adults, both men and women.

591 randomly sampled patients over the age of 45, stratified for age and socioeconomic status and falling into four cohorts (general population, patients with an existing clinical label of heart failure, patients prescribed diuretics, and patients deemed at high risk of heart failure).

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got BNP (Nesiritide) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Community cohort study (substudy of the echocardiographic heart of England screening study).

Four randomly selected general practices in the West Midlands of England.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Biomarkers, Cardiac Output, Low, Cohort Studies, Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay, Natriuretic Peptide, Brain, Nerve Tissue Proteins and Peptide Fragments.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of BNP (Nesiritide) in 591 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2002 (BMJ (Clinical research ed.)), a journal based in England.

More context: the BNP (Nesiritide) compound page, all human trials.