• Raoul Stahrenberg, Cord-Friedrich Niehaus, Frank Edelmann, Meinhard Mende, Janin Wohlfahrt, Katrin Wasser, Joachim Seegers, Gerd Hasenfuß, Klaus Gröschel, and Rolf Wachter.
• Department of Cardiology and Pneumology, University of Göttingen, Robert-Koch-Str. 40, Göttingen 37075, Germany. stahrenberg@med.uni-goettingen.de
• J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr.. 2013 May 1;84(5):479-87.

Background And PurposeClinical scores are recommended for predicting cardiovascular risk in patients with cerebral ischaemia to inform secondary prevention. Blood biomarkers may improve prediction beyond clinical scores.MethodsWithin the observational Find-AF trial (ISRCTN46104198), 197 patients >18 years of age with cerebral ischaemia and without atrial fibrillation had blood sampled at baseline. The predictive value of five biomarkers for a combined vascular endpoint (acute coronary syndrome, stroke, cardiovascular death) and all-cause mortality was determined, alone and in addition to the Essen Stroke Risk Score (ESRS), Stroke Prognostic Instrument 2 (SPI-2) and National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIH-SS).ResultsThere were 23 vascular events (11.7%) and 13 deaths (6.6%) to 1 year follow-up. In multivariate analyses of all markers, only high-sensitivity troponin T (hsTropT) remained independently predictive for vascular events (p=0.045) and all-cause mortality (p=0.004). hsTropT was higher in patients with a vascular event (median 12.7 ng/ml vs 5.1 ng/ml), and patients with hsTropT above the median of 6.15 ng/ml had vascular events more frequently (HR 3.86, p=0.008). For prediction of vascular events as well as all-cause mortality, hsTropT significantly improved multivariate Cox regression models with ESRS, SPI-2 or NIH-SS. The c-statistic increased non-significantly from 0.695 (ESRS) or 0.710 (hsTropT) to 0.747 (ESRS+hsTropT) and from 0.699 (SPI-2) to 0.763 (SPI-2+hsTropT). No patient with a low-risk ESRS and an hsTropT below the median had a vascular event or died.ConclusionshsTropT predicts vascular events and all-cause mortality in patients with acute cerebral ischaemia and improves prediction beyond established clinical scores.

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