N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide and exercise capacity in chronic heart failure: data from the Heart Failure and a Controlled Trial Investigating Outcomes of Exercise Training (HF-ACTION) study

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at BNP (Nesiritide).

To examine the relationship between N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and exercise capacity in a large contemporary cohort of patients with chronic heart failure.

Why It Was Studied

Natriuretic peptides such as NT-proBNP are important biomarkers in heart failure.

Who Took Part

The study group was 1383 subjects.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

The researchers analyzed the relationship between baseline NT-proBNP and peak oxygen uptake (peak VO(2)) or distance in the 6-minute walk test in 1383 subjects enrolled in the HF-ACTION study.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

The subjects were allocated by chance, so the BNP (Nesiritide) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Linear regression models were used to analyze the relationship between NT-proBNP and peak Vo(2) or distance in the 6-minute walk test in the context of other clinical variables.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Biomarkers, Chronic Disease, Cohort Studies, Data Collection, Exercise Test, Exercise Tolerance and Heart Failure.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of BNP (Nesiritide) in 1383 subjects.

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

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2009 (American heart journal), a journal based in United States.

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