Heart-type fatty acid-binding protein predicts long-term mortality after acute coronary syndrome and identifies high-risk patients across the range of troponin values.

Description

Heart-type fatty acid-binding protein (H-FABP) is a novel marker of risk in patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS). It has been suggested that H-FABP has advantages over other markers such as troponin or myoglobin levels. The present study evaluated the prognostic value of H-FABP in a registry of 1,448 patients with acute coronary syndromes from West Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. The authors found a significant and independent relationship between H-FABP levels and mortality over the one-year study follow-up. In addition, even when troponin levels were normal, an elevated H-FABP concentration was predictive of an increased risk of death. This study suggests that measuring H-FABP levels might be useful in ACS syndrome patients, particularly when these patients are troponin negative. The study is accompanied by an interesting editorial (de Lemos JA. J Am Coll Cardiol 2007;50:2068-70), which briefly assesses recent developments in the quest to identify novel, sensitive, and specific markers of risk in patients with ACS.