Objective To assess the cardiovascular prognostic value of mid-regional pro-adrenomedullin (MR-proADM) and compare this with B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), on death or a composite end point in patients who developed heart failure after an acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

Methods From a subset of 214 patients from the OPTIMAAL study, blood samples were obtained at a median of 3 days after AMI when patients had developed signs and/or symptoms of heart failure (HF) or a left ventricular ejection fraction <0.35%. End points were all-cause mortality and a composite end point, including death, myocardial reinfarction, stroke and/or resuscitated cardiac arrest.

Results Mean age of the patients was 68±10 years and mean follow-up was 918±311 days. During follow-up 31 patients died and 61 reached the composite end point. In multivariable Cox proportional hazard models adjusted for BNP, NT-proBNP and other covariates, a doubling of MR-proADM showed a 3.02 (95% CI 1.66 to 5.49) times increased risk of mortality (p<0.001) and a 1.77 (95% CI 1.13 to 2.78) times increased risk of reaching the composite end point (p=0.013). Receiver operating characteristic curves indicated that MR-proADM (area under the curve (AUC)=0.81) was a stronger predictor of mortality than BNP (AUC=0.66; p=0.0034 vs MR-proADM) and NT-proBNP (AUC=0.67; p<0.001 vs MR-proADM). Furthermore, MR-proADM enhanced significantly risk classification and integrated discrimination improvement in comparison with BNP and NT-proBNP. Finally, changes in MR-proADM over time significantly added prognostic information to the baseline value.

Conclusion MR-proADM is a promising biomarker and has strong prognostic value for mortality and morbidity in patients with HF after an AMI. In this study, MR-proADM had stronger predictive value than BNP and NT-proBNP.