University of Groningen Novel concept to guide systolic heart failure medication by repeated biomarker testing-results from TIME-CHF in context of predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine TIME-CHF Investigators; Davarzani, Nasser;

Background It is uncertain whether repeated measurements of a multi-target biomarker panel may help to personalize medical heart failure (HF) therapy to improve outcome in chronic HF. Methods This analysis included 499 patients from the Trial of Intensified versus standard Medical therapy in Elderly patients with Congestive Heart Failure (TIME-CHF), aged ≥ 60 years, LVEF ≤ 45%, and NYHA ≥ II, who had repeated clinical visits within 19 months follow-up. The interaction between repeated measurements of biomarkers and treatment effects of loop diuretics, spironolactone, β-blockers, and renin-angiotensin system (RAS) inhibitors on risk of HF hospitalization or death was investigated in a hypothesis-generating analysis. Generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were used to account for the correlation between recurrences of events in a patient. Results One hundred patients (20%) had just one event (HF hospitalization or death) and 87 (17.4%) had at least two events. Loop diuretic up-titration had a beneficial effect for patients with high interleukin-6 (IL6) or high high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) (interaction, P = 0.013 and P = 0.001), whereas the opposite was the case with low hsCRP (interaction, P = 0.013). Higher dosage of loop diuretics was associated with poor outcome in patients with high blood urea nitrogen (BUN) or prealbumin (interaction, P = 0.006 and P = 0.001), but not in those with low levels of these biomarkers. Spironolactone uptitration was associated with lower risk of HF hospitalization or death in patients with high cystatin C (CysC) (interaction, P = 0.021). β-Blockers up-titration might have a beneficial effect in patients with low soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFlt) (interaction, P = 0.021). No treatment biomarker interactions were found for RAS inhibition. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13167-018-0137-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Nasser Davarzani n.davarzani@maastrichtuniversity.nl 1 Department of Data Science andKnowledge Engineering,Maastricht University, St. Servaasklooster 39, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, the Netherlands 2 Department of Cardiology, Maastricht University Medical Center, Maastricht, the Netherlands 3 GROW School for Oncology and Developmental Biology, Department of Pathology, Maastricht University Medical Center, Maastricht, the Netherlands 4 Department of Cardiology, Kantonsspital St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland 5 Division of Cardiology, University Hospital Bruderholz, Bruderholz, Switzerland 6 Department of Cardiology, University Hospital Berne, Berne, Switzerland 7 Department of Cardiology, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands 8 Roche Diagnostics GmbH, Penzberg, Germany 9 Roche Diagnostics International, Rotkreuz, Switzerland 10 Department of Cardiology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland EPMA Journal (2018) 9:161–173 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13167-018-0137-7