[Usefulness of brain natriuretic peptide levels, as compared with usual clinical control, for the treatment monitoring of patients with heart failure]

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at BNP (Nesiritide).

Chronic heart failure continues to have a poor prognosis, in spite of advances made in its therapy.

The aim of their study was to evaluate the usefulness of a brain natriuretic peptide (BNP)-guided therapy for the treatment of patients with heart failure.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 60 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as older adults, both men and women.

The researchers carried out a prospective and randomized study including 60 patients consecutively discharged with the diagnosis of heart failure NYHA class III or IV in one cardiology department of a Spanish hospital; 30 patients were randomly assigned to a symptom-guided therapy group based on the clinical Framingham score, and 30 to a BNP-guided therapy group.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

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

Therapy was adjusted to obtain a clinical score <2 in the symptom-guided group and BNP levels <100pg/ml in the BNP-guided group.

Follow up was 16±4 months.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Heart Failure, Monitoring, Physiologic and Natriuretic Peptide, Brain.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of BNP (Nesiritide) in 60 patients.

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2010 (Medicina clinica), a journal based in Spain.

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