You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 4, Issue 2
  • Elevated brain natriuretic peptide levels in chronic fatigue syndrome associate with cardiac dysfunction: a case control study

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Special populations
Original research article
Elevated brain natriuretic peptide levels in chronic fatigue syndrome associate with cardiac dysfunction: a case control study
  1. Cara Tomas1,
  2. Andreas Finkelmeyer1,2,
  3. Tim Hodgson2,
  4. Laura MacLachlan1,
  5. Guy A MacGowan1,3,
  6. Andrew M Blamire1,2 and
  7. Julia L Newton1,4
  1. 1 Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University, Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  2. 2 Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre, Newcastle University, Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  3. 3 Cardiology, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  4. 4 CRESTA, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
  1. Correspondence to Professor Julia L Newton, Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University, Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; julia.newton{at}ncl.ac.uk

Abstract

Objectives To explore levels of the brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and how these associate with the cardiac abnormalities recently identified in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

Methods Cardiac magnetic resonance examinations were performed using 3T Philips Intera Achieva scanner (Best, Netherlands) in CFS (Fukuda) participants and sedentary controls matched group wise for age and sex. BNP was also measured by using an enzyme immunoassay in plasma from 42 patients with CFS and 10 controls.

Results BNP levels were significantly higher in the CFS cohort compared with the matched controls (P=0.013). When we compared cardiac volumes (end-diastolic and end-systolic) between those with high BNP levels (BNP >400 pg/mL) and low BNP (<400 pg/mL), there were significantly lower cardiac volumes in those with the higher BNP levels in both end-systolic and end-diastolic volumes (P=0.05). There were no relationships between fatigue severity, length of disease and BNP levels (P=0.2) suggesting that our findings are unlikely to be related to deconditioning.

Conclusion This study confirms an association between reduced cardiac volumes and BNP in CFS. Lack of relationship between length of disease suggests that findings are not secondary to deconditioning. Further studies are needed to explore the utility of BNP to act as a stratification paradigm in CFS that directs targeted treatments.

Trail registration number Registered with NIHR Portfolio CLRN ID 97805.

  • fatigue
  • bnp
  • cardiac function

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/openhrt-2017-000697

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors All authors participated in the conception, delivery and analysis of the study. All authors have reviewed, contributed to and approved the final version of the manuscript.

    • Funding Medical Research Council, ME Research UK.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval The study was approved by the Newcastle and North Tyneside research ethics committee (REC 12/NE/0146, CLRN ID 97805).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement All data are available in an anonymous format on request from the PI.