Superiority of Serum Cystatin C Over Creatinine in Prediction of Long-Term Prognosis at Discharge From ICU

Aim: The present study was established to investigate the use of the serum cystatin C/prealbumin (Cys-C/PAB) ratio as a predictive factor for long-term prognosis in patients with chronic heart failure.Methods: We divided our retrospective cohort of 6,311 patients admitted to hospital due to an episode of heart failure (HF) into three groups according to the Cys-C/PAB ratio. The endpoints were cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. Median follow-up time were 3.3 years (2–8 years), during which 2,945 (46.7%) patients died.Results: The Cys-C/PAB ratio was revealed to be an independent predictor of cardiovascular mortality (HR: 1.12, 95% CI: 1.15–1.23, P < 0.01) and all-cause mortality (HR: 1.19, 95% CI: 1.13–1.24, P < 0.01) by multivariable Cox analysis. Integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) showed that the Cys-C/PAB ratio in conjunction with the level of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) conferred a significant improvement in predicting individual risks of cardiovascular (P = 0.023) and all-cause (P = 0.028) mortality. For those with a high Cys-C/PAB ratio in combination with a high NT-proBNP level, the long-term cardiovascular mortality risk ratio was 8.6-times higher than for those with low values, and 7.51-times for all-cause mortality. Our study also showed that Cys-C/PAB and NT-proBNP in combination displayed higher value for the prediction of cardiovascular and all-cause in-hospital mortality in patients with HF.Conclusions: The Cys-C/PAB ratio is valuable for predicting cardiovascular and all-cause mortality in patients with HF and offers additional information to that provided by NT-proBNP.

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Role of cystatin C as a biomarker of acute kidney injury and as an independent long-term predictor of cardiovascular events, mortality and functional outcome

Italian Journal of Medicine ◽

10.4081/itjm.2012.195 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Carolina Marrani ◽

Teuta Zenjelaj ◽

Daniela Bartoli ◽

Francesco Corradi ◽

Rinaldo Innocenti

Keyword(s):

Acute Kidney Injury ◽

Cystatin C ◽

Cardiovascular Events ◽

Cox Regression ◽

Elevated Serum ◽

Kidney Injury ◽

Serum Cystatin C ◽

Serum Cystatin ◽

Long Term Mortality

Introduction Serum cystatin C measurements as an early biomarker of acute kidney injury (AKI) is gaining acceptance as studies confirm and define its usefulness. The aim of this study is to determine whether increase in serum cystatin C has an impact on long-term mortality, independently from the presence of the kidney injury itself.Materials and methods A retrospective study (20-month follow-up) was conducted in 173 not selected hospitalized patients. According to serum cystatin C concentrations, patients were stratified in risk classes by quartiles (≥0.55 and <1 mg/L; ≥1 and <1.17 mg/L; ≥1.17 and 1.57 mg/L; ≥1.57 and ≤5.29 mg/L). We compared the association of cystatin C levels with the risk for long-term mortality, after adjustment for age, sex, race and heart failure risk factors.Results A relationship with higher serum levels of cystatin C and mortality was found in patients with and without AKI, being stronger in patients without AKI. After multivariate adjustment, the highest quartile of cystatin C (>1.5 mg/L) was associated with a lower risk for long-term mortality. The statistical analysis (Cox regression) of the independent variables as far as mortality is concerned confirmed the significance of our result (RR 3.60; IC 1.73–7.48; p = 0.001).Conclusions In summary, elevated serum cystatin C level (>1.5 mg/L) was strongly and independently associated with negative clinical outcomes such as mortality and cardiovascular events, independently from the kidney injury itself. The dosage of cystatin C might play an important role in clinical practice for the assessment of cardiovascular risk stratification.

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