Critical Diagnostics, the developer of the Presage ST2 Assay, has reported the publication of the Penn Heart Failure Study (PHFS) in an advance e-publication of the 19 January 2010 edition of Circulation: Heart Failure.
The results of the study demonstrated that ST2 levels not only predict outcomes for ambulatory outpatients with chronic heart failure, but also risk-stratify such patients.
Physicians can more appropriately tailor treatments to each patient and maximize utility of scarce and expensive health care resources, by identifying the patients at highest risk.
The study found that patients in the highest ST2 tertile had a higher risk of adverse outcomes compared to the lowest tertile, with an unadjusted hazard ratio (HR) of 3.2) that remained after multivariable adjustment.
Critical Diagnostics CEO Pat Arensdorf said the researchers also found that more than one in seven chronic heart failure patients can be more appropriately risk-stratified when using ST2 and NT-proBNP in addition to the Seattle Heart Failure Model.
"By using the Presage ST2 Assay, clinicians may be able to target heart failure therapy more appropriately," Arensdorf said.