New research shows how one source of cardiac failure can renew the hardest to get back and can lead to extra risk for heart failure patients, especially in COPD. The study by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers is published in the journal Circulation:Heart Failure.

Common reasons for heart failure, which can usually be worked out, occur in both chronic and acute cases. High blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, diabetes, obesity and certain medications drive patients to have a higher risk of heart failure at longer follow-up time than healthier patients. Little research has evaluated whether these risk factors, or the factors contributing to the development of heart failure, are influenced by genes and competitive factors.

Researchers had a cohort of 19,290 heart failure patients who signed a consent form before their surgery or within 24 hours of receiving a heart bypass. Data on demographic factors, age, heart failure troponins, body mass index, functional status and environmental exposures (exposure to stress hormones) were collected before, during and after the two-year, prospective study. Death certificates and medical records were available for each participant and year of enrollment.

The genetic elements and competitive factors that contributed to heart failure were examined in 1,043 concurrently enrolled patients, with 1,004 standard heterozygous (S allele) and 1,041 S allele carriers. Competing factors included age, sex, race, obesity, blood pressure, and blood glucose at the beginning of the study.

The study found a genetic Q-score of −24.8 compared with −38.0 in Standard heterozygous patients and −26.9 in S allele carriers in patients who developed significant heart failure troponin levels within the 12 months before their heart surgery. “Because of the small group size of these patients, LINCs and other Q-s scores are not yet useful in the evaluation of Q-transcriptome accumulation,” said Dr. R. Scott Hamlin, Associate Professor in the Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry at the UAB School of Medicine, who conducted the study. Online scores were developed and validated by LaboratoryCorp of Dallas, Texas.