Wednesday, December 2 | 10:20 a.m.-10:30 a.m. | W3-SSCA07-6 | Room E353C
Cardiac MRI biomarkers can help detect and assess myocardial remodeling in mild-to-moderate aortic stenosis (AS), German researchers have found.
In this Wednesday morning session, presenter Jan Paul Janssen, MD, of the University of Cologne will share results from a study he and colleagues conducted that included 58 patients with the condition (mean age, 77 years; 29% women) who underwent echocardiography, laboratory testing, and cardiac MRI (CMR). For these patients, the team tracked CMR markers such as maximal left ventricular (LV) wall thickness, native T1, indexed extracellular volume (iECV), and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) burden.
Myocardial remodeling refers to structural, cellular, and molecular patterns that the heart develops in response to injury, inflammation, or disease. In their study, the team discovered that CMR-derived remodeling characteristics showed particular biomarker associations, including the following:
· Troponin T was independently linked to maximal LV wall thickness (p = 0.009) and LGE burden (p = 0.007) -- "consistent with hypertrophic remodeling and replacement fibrosis."
· N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) was independently associated with indexed extracellular volume (iECV, p = 0.042), and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP-1) with native T1 (p = 0.035), supporting associations with diffuse interstitial remodeling.
· Galectin-3 was not independently tied to native T1 after adjustment (p = 0.068).
From these results, Janssen and colleagues noted that "circulating biomarkers did not uniformly reflect myocardial disease burden, but rather differentially tracked specific CMR-defined remodeling patterns," and concluded that "in mild-to-moderate AS, combining CMR tissue characterization with selected plasma biomarkers may improve detection of adverse myocardial remodeling before severe valve disease develops."
