Serum Catestatin Expression and Cardiometabolic Parameters in Patients With Congestive Heart Failure

The congestive heart failure (HF) is a condition associated with substantial morbidity, mortality, and high healthcare expenditures. From the pathophysiological standpoint, several mechanisms contribute to the progression and dysfunction of the failing heart such as an increased hemodynamic overload, impaired myocyte calcium cycling, upregulated apoptotic activity, deficient or increased production of extracellular matrix, genetic predilections and, finally, excessive neurohumoral stimulation. The vasoactive neurohumoral systems such as sympathetic nervous system, renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) system all play a role in maintaining volume and circulatory homeostasis in the situation of impaired cardiac output.

Catestatin (CST), on another hand, is a novel endogenous peptide cleaved from chromogranin A (CgA) that is involved in the regulation of cardiac function and arterial blood pressure. The role of this peptide is to elicit potent catecholamine release-inhibitory activity by acting at the level of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Therefore, the main hypothesis of this study is that the observed serum CST levels will reflect the degree of neurohormonal activation in HF, showing a significant relationship with the degree of disease severity as measured by relevant functional classifications (such as NYHA class and/or similar). Secondly, investigators expect to detect correlation of catestatin serum levels with the established risk stratification scores in HF and with the echocardiographic parameters of the ventricular function, both in terms of systolic and diastolic cardiac function. Parameters of inflammation, NT-proBNP, hs-cTnI, renal function parameters, and basic hematologic/biochemistry indices from peripheral blood will also be obtained and analyzed for all study participants.

Furthermore, according to the latest European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic HF, participants with established congestive HF and the whole spectrum of left ventricular ejection fractions ranging from <40% to ≥50% will be included in the study.

Finally, all echocardiographic and laboratory parameters obtained from peripheral blood will be recorded and compared with respective healthy and matched control participants while participants diagnosed with HF will additionally be analyzed for potential differences between subgroups of interest.