A rapid B-type natriuretic peptide assay accurately diagnoses left ventricular dysfunction and heart failure: a multicenter evaluation

What Was Tested

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

The purpose of this study was to assess the performance of a point-of-care assay to diagnose and evaluate the severity of CHF on the basis of the New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification system.

Why It Was Studied

B-Type natriuretic peptide (BNP), a protein released from the left ventricle in response to volume expansion and pressure overload, has emerged as the first whole blood marker for the identification of individuals with congestive heart failure (CHF).

Who Took Part

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

Through a prospective, multicenter trial, whole blood samples were collected from a total of 1050 inpatients, outpatients, and healthy control patients.

Participants were divided into subgroups for BNP analysis: patients without cardiovascular CHF (n = 473), patients with hypertension and no cardiovascular disease (n = 168), NYHA class I CHF (n = 73), class II CHF (n = 135), class III CHF (n = 141), and class IV CHF (n = 60).

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a multicenter study.

Running at several centres spread the BNP (Nesiritide) study over different clinics and patient groups.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Atrial Natriuretic Factor, Biomarkers, Heart Failure, Natriuretic Peptide, Brain, Point-of-Care Systems, ROC Curve and Sensitivity and Specificity.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a multicenter study of BNP (Nesiritide).

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2002 (American heart journal), a journal based in United States.

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