Diagnostic and prognostic utility of bone morphogenetic protein 10 in acute dyspnea: a cohort study

The possible clinical utility of Bone Morphogenetic Protein 10 (BMP10), a novel atrial-specific biomarker, is incompletely understood. We aimed to test the hypothesis that BMP10 has high diagnostic and prognostic accuracy in patients presenting with acute dyspnea.

In a multicenter diagnostic study, BMP10, high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT), and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) concentrations were determined in patients presenting with acute dyspnea to the emergency department. The final diagnosis was centrally adjudicated by two independent cardiologists blinded to BMP10. Diagnostic accuracy for acute heart failure (AHF) was quantified using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). 720-day all-cause mortality and the composite of all-cause mortality or AHF rehospitalization were prognostic endpoints. Among 933 consecutive patients, 54% were adjudicated to have AHF. Patients with AHF had higher BMP10 concentrations (median 3.34 [IQR 2.55-4.35] ng/mL) compared to patients with other causes of acute dyspnea (2.04 [1.74-2.45] ng/mL, p < 0.001). The AUC of BMP10 was 0.85 (95%CI, 0.82-0.87), versus 0.79 (95%CI, 0.76-0.82, p < 0.001) for hs-cTnT and 0.91 (95%CI, 0.90-0.93, p < 0.001) for NT-proBNP. The combination of BMP10 with NT-proBNP (AUC 0.92, 95%CI, 0.90-0.94) did not significantly increase the AUC versus NT-proBNP alone. BMP10 was a powerful predictor of death and AHF rehospitalization, but did not provide incremental value to models including NT-proBNP.

BMP10 had a high diagnostic accuracy for AHF and high prognostic accuracy for death and AHF rehospitalization. However, it did not provide relevant incremental value to the current gold standard NT-proBNP.