Mechanisms and outcomes of heart failure: from HFpEF, HFmrEF, and HFrEF to transplantation

From Cell to Gene: Deciphering the Mechanism of Heart Failure With Single-Cell Sequencing

Heart failure (HF) is a prevalent cardiovascular disease with significant morbidity and mortality rates worldwide. Due to the intricate structure of the heart, diverse cell types, and the complex pathogenesis of HF, further in-depth investigation into the underlying mechanisms  is required. The elucidation of the heterogeneity of cardiomyocytes and the intercellular communication network is particularly important. Traditional high-throughput sequencing methods provide an average measure of gene expression, failing to capture the "heterogeneity" between cells and impacting the accuracy of gene function knowledge. In contrast, single-cell sequencing techniques allow for the amplification of the entire genome or transcriptome at the individual cell level, facilitating the examination of gene structure and expression with unparalleled precision. This approach offers valuable insights into disease mechanisms, enabling the identification of changes in cellular components and gene expressions during hypertrophy associated with HF. Moreover, it reveals distinct cell populations and their unique roles in the HF microenvironment, providing a comprehensive understanding of the cellular landscape that underpins HF pathogenesis. This review focuses on the insights provided by single-cell sequencing techniques into the mechanisms underlying HF and discusses the challenges encountered in current cardiovascular research.

Knowledge-aware patient representation learning for multiple disease subtypes

Learning latent representations of patients with a target disease is a core problem in a broad range of downstream applications, such as clinical endpoint prediction. The suffering of patients may have multiple subtypes with certain similarities and differences, which need to be addressed for learning effective patient representation to facilitate the downstream tasks. However, existing studies either ignore the distinction of disease subtypes to learn disease-level representations, or neglect the correlations between subtypes and only learn disease subtype-level representations, which affects the performance of patient representation learning. To alleviate this problem, we studied how to effectively integrate data from all disease subtypes to improve the representation of each subtype. Specifically, we proposed a knowledge-aware shared-private neural network model to explicitly use disease-oriented knowledge and learn shared and specific representations from the disease and its subtype perspectives. To evaluate the feasibility of the proposed model, we conducted a particular downstream task, i.e., clinical endpoint prediction, on the basis of the learned patient presentations. The results on the real-world clinical datasets demonstrated that our model could yield a significant improvement over state-of-the-art models.

Hypocalcaemia predicts 12-month re-hospitalization in heart failure

BACKGROUND

Potential pathophysiology of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) has not been fully explored. The aim of the study was to reveal the association of serum calcium concentration at baseline with 12-month clinical outcome in the disease.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A total of 350 patients with newly diagnosed HFpEF were included in this prospective observational study. There were no malignant tumour, kidney disease, thyroid disease, calcium and vitamin D supplements in the patients. All of them received 12-month follow-up, and endpoints were cardiac re-hospitalization and death. Baseline serum calcium concentration was measured using AIA2000ST enzyme immunoassay analyser. Cardiopulmonary exercise, six-minute walk distance test, EQ5D questionnaire and cardiac ultrasound were performed to evaluate exercise capacity, quality of life and left ventricle function.

RESULTS

Multivariate COX regression analysis revealed that baseline hypocalcaemia was associated with the increased risk of cardiac re-hospitalization and death during the follow-up period (HR: 2.10, 95% CI: 1.69-2.61; HR: 8.26, 95% CI: 2.88-23.70). Furthermore, baseline hypocalcaemia was related to the deterioration of 6-minute walk distance, quality of life score (EQ-5D), right quadriceps strength, left atrium volume index and left ventricular ejection fraction during the follow-up period (HR: 1.65, 95% CI: 1.21-2.26; HR: 1.55, 95% CI: 1.12-2.11; HR: 2.56, 95% CI: 1.68-3.89; HR: 1.44, 95% CI: 1.03-1.98; HR: 1.36, 95% CI: 1.02-1.80).

CONCLUSION

Baseline hypocalcaemia predicted 12-month cardiac re-hospitalization and death in HFpEF patients without calcium and vitamin D supplements partly through left ventricle and skeletal muscle function pathways.

The impact of heart rate on patients diagnosed with heart failure with mid-range ejection fraction

OBJECTIVE

The relationship between prognosis and heart rate remains unclear among patients diagnosed with heart failure with mid-range ejection fraction (HFmrEF). The aim of the present study was to assess the effect of heart rate in this group of patients.

METHODS

Of the 197 patients diagnosed with HFmrEF, 92 had a heart rate <70 beats/min (bpm), and 105 had a heart rate ≥70 bpm. We analyzed the outcomes including all-cause death and HF-related hospitalization and evaluated the quality of life.

RESULTS

The outcome demonstrated a lower incidence in patients with heart rate <70 bpm. The outcome-free survival illustrated significant difference in survival rate (p=0.045). The Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire total scores and physical subscale in the lower heart rate group decreased compared with the heart rate ≥70 bpm group (p=0.048 and p=0.03, respectively). In the following analysis of patients with sinus rhythm, beta blockers showed great positive effects on patients with heart rate <70 bpm (p=0.046), as for the quality of life in patients with beta blocker, heart rate <70 bpm showed lower total and physical scores (p=0.025 and p=0.017, respectively).

CONCLUSION

Our results showed that heart rate is an important prognostic factor in patients with HFmrEF. Patients with heart rate <70 bpm was related with a lower risk of outcomes and better quality of life. Beta blockers reduced the outcome rate in patients with sinus rhythm.

Internal quality control status for BNP and NT-proBNP in China from 2014 to 2017

BACKGROUND

This study aimed to investigate and analyze the status of internal quality control (IQC) for BNP and NT-proBNP from 2014 to 2017, so as to have an integral understanding of quality performance of measurement in clinical laboratories in China.

METHODS

The 4-year IQC information for BNP and NT-proBNP of participant laboratories were collected through EQA reporting system. Percentages of laboratories meeting different quality requirements (pass rates) for current coefficient of variations (CVs) were calculated afterwards. Further analysis for current CVs and pass rates among different years and measurement systems were conducted. Finally, we analyzed and summarized IQC practice and its changes in 4 years.

RESULTS

The current CVs for BNP and NT-proBNP have decreased significantly from 2014 to 2017, and pass rates both presented significant increasing trends. NT-proBNP had higher pass rates than BNP regardless of 1/3TEa or 1/4TEa specification was used. The main measurement systems for two analytes were different. For NT-proBNP, current CVs of Roche has decreased significantly among 4 years and were significantly lower than Radiometer and BioMérieux in 2015. Current CVs of Abbott also had decreasing tendency for BNP. Analysis of IQC practice indicated that control rules and IQC frequency had made great progress in 4 years.

CONCLUSION

The imprecision performance of measurement of BNP and NT-proBNP has improved with decreasing of current CVs and increasing of pass rates in 4 years. However, it still needs continual improvement. Clinical laboratories in China should take active actions to promote performance of BNP and NT-proBNP measurement.