NHLBI-Backed JAMA Study Finds MRI and Blood Tests Improve HCM Risk Prediction

Overview

• The JAMA study, released Monday, found that combining cardiac MRI, clinical history, and the blood marker NT-proBNP predicts adverse events in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy more accurately than current tools.
• The Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Registry enrolled 2,698 people at 44 centers across North America and Europe and tracked outcomes for about seven years.
• Researchers identified five predictors of poor outcomes: the extent of scar on MRI, thicker heart muscle, larger heart chambers, a past history of heart failure, and elevated NT-proBNP, a protein that signals heart stress.
• During follow-up, 117 major events occurred in 104 participants, including deaths, sustained dangerous heart rhythms treated with shocks, left-ventricular assist device implants, or heart transplants.
• NHLBI’s acting director said the results support adding MRI and biomarkers to risk assessment, and investigators plan to create a formal risk score and test it in outside datasets; people who already had defibrillators were not included, so the findings apply to patients without those devices at enrollment.