Detection of muscle wasting in patients with chronic heart failure using C-terminal agrin fragment: results from the Studies Investigating Co-morbidities Aggravating Heart Failure (SICA-HF)

Aims Skeletal muscle wasting affects 20% of patients with chronic heart failure and has serious implications for their activities of daily living. Assessment of muscle wasting is technically challenging. C‐terminal agrin‐fragment (CAF), a breakdown product of the synaptically located protein agrin,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of heart failure 2015-12, Vol.17 (12), p.1283-1293
Main Authors: Steinbeck, Lisa, Ebner, Nicole, Valentova, Miroslava, Bekfani, Tarek, Elsner, Sebastian, Dahinden, Pius, Hettwer, Stefan, Scherbakov, Nadja, Schefold, Jörg C., Sandek, Anja, Springer, Jochen, Doehner, Wolfram, Anker, Stefan D., von Haehling, Stephan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absorptiometry, Photon
Aged
Agrin
Agrin - blood
Biomarker
Biomarkers - blood
Chronic Disease
Female
Heart Failure
Heart Failure - complications
Humans
Male
Muscle wasting
Muscular Atrophy - diagnosis
Muscular Atrophy - etiology
Peptide Fragments - blood
ROC Curve
Sarcopenia
Sensitivity and Specificity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Aims Skeletal muscle wasting affects 20% of patients with chronic heart failure and has serious implications for their activities of daily living. Assessment of muscle wasting is technically challenging. C‐terminal agrin‐fragment (CAF), a breakdown product of the synaptically located protein agrin, has shown early promise as biomarker of muscle wasting. We sought to investigate the diagnostic properties of CAF in muscle wasting among patients with heart failure. Methods and results We assessed serum CAF levels in 196 patients who participated in the Studies Investigating Co‐morbidities Aggravating Heart Failure (SICA‐HF). Muscle wasting was identified using dual‐energy X‐ray absorptiometry (DEXA) in 38 patients (19.4%). Patients with muscle wasting demonstrated higher CAF values than those without (125.1 ± 59.5 pmol/L vs. 103.8 ± 42.9 pmol/L, P = 0.01). Using receiver operating characteristics (ROC), we calculated the optimal CAF value to identify patients with muscle wasting as >87.5 pmol/L, which had a sensitivity of 78.9% and a specificity of 43.7%. The area under the ROC curve was 0.63 (95% confidence interval 0.56–0.70). Using simple regression, we found that serum CAF was associated with handgrip (R = − 0.17, P = 0.03) and quadriceps strength (R = − 0.31, P 
ISSN:1388-9842
1879-0844
DOI:10.1002/ejhf.400