Soluble ST2 as a Diagnostic and Prognostic Marker for Acute Heart Failure Syndromes

We investigated the association of sST2 with diagnostic and prognostic outcomes and assessed whether it aids B-natriuretic peptide (BNP) in diagnosing and predicting outcomes in emergency department (ED) patients with suspected AHFS.

We recruited patients who presented to the ED of 3 tertiary hospitals with signs or symptoms of AHFS and met modified Framingham criteria for AHFS. Outcome measures were a final diagnosis of AHFS and 5-and 30-day adverse events.

In the 295 subjects with sST2 available, the median sST2 was 0.20 ng/ml (IQR=0.10, 0.34). Although unadjusted analyses indicated sST2 was significantly associated with the diagnosis of AHFS (p=0.02), this was not so in the adjusted analysis (p=0.33). Moderately low diagnostic utility was noted with an AUC of 0.62 (95% CI=0.56, 0.69). Similar sST2 test characteristics were seen when BNP was restricted between 100 and 500 pg/ml. While sST2 was associated with AHFS readmission at 30-days (p=0.04), in the adjusted analyses it was not associated with adverse events.

In patients with signs or symptoms of AHFS, unadjusted analyses indicated that sST2 was significantly asso-ciated with the diagnosis of AHFS and with 30-day AHFS recidivism. However, the associations did not carry over to ad-justed analyses, and sST2 did not add significant information with regard to explaining the diagnostic and prognostic vari-ability of BNP.