Indicators of cancer may also be markers of heart failure

Heart failure and cancer are conditions with a number of shared characteristics. A new study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine found that in patients with heart failure, several known tumor markers can also be indicators of heart failure severity and progression.

In the study, researchers measured six markers that are indicators for various cancers—including ovarian, breast, lung, pancreatic, colorectal, and germ cell cancers—in 2,079 patients with heart failure.

Several of the markers correlated strongly with known heart failure markers and also predicted which patients were most likely to die prematurely.

"Our study provides further fuel to the notion that cancer and cardiovascular disease are related, as we now demonstrate that pathways that are sensed by tumor markers are apparently also dysregulated in heart failure," said senior author Rudolf A. de Boer MD, Ph.D., of the University Medical Centre Groningen, in The Netherlands.