Abstract

Background: Ischaemic heart disease (IHD) including coronary artery disease and its final result-myocardial infarction is the greatest single cause of mortality and one of the most common cause of disability. To reduce mortality, it is important to pay attention to the diagnosis of ischaemia as well as the inclusion of appropriate treatment.The effectiveness of diagnosis and treatment can be increased by using new cardiac-specific markers characterized by high sensitivity and specificity whose level correlates with the severity and extent of necrosis. Such a novel biomarker seems to be growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF-15).

Methods and Results: The literature has been searched forlarge clinical trials evaluating efficacy of GDF-15 in patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD) and acute coronary syndrome(ACS). A total number of 17,942 patients with CAD from 4 clinical trials and 26,848 patients with ACS from 8 clinical trials were included to assess the relationship between the level of GDF-15 and risk of death and major cardiovascular events during follow-up. The evaluated level of GDF-15 was proven to be correlate with increased risk of all cause of death, cardiovascular mortality, myocardial infarction, stroke and hospitalization for heart failure.

Conclusion: While the morbidity due to the IHD is still increasing, more modern methods of treatment are applied and new groups of drugs are included in the therapy, it is also understandable that the need for new, easily available and more cardiac-specific markers will be urgent. We hope, that one of them will become GDF-15.

Keywords: Coronary artery disease; Acute coronary syndrome; Growth differentiation factor 15