BG Medicine, Inc. announced the publication of the results of a clinical research study conducted at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) that provide further evidence that elevated levels of galectin-3 are predictive of adverse outcomes in chronic heart failure patients and suggest that the prognostic value of this non-invasive biomarker may be enhanced when serial measurements are made over time. In this clinical research study, which was recently published online in the European Journal of Heart Failure, first author Dr. Shweta Motiwala and colleagues of the Division of Cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital demonstrate that stable heart failure patients whose galectin-3 blood levels were greater than 20 ng/ml, when measured at three-month intervals, experienced 50% more cardiovascular events, including unplanned hospitalizations for heart failure, than patients whose galectin-3 levels were consistently lower than 20 ng/ml. Further, these research data, which were collected from over 900 outpatient visits, also found that increases in galectin-3 levels above a threshold value of 20 ng/ml between outpatient visits, and increases in galectin-3 levels in excess of 15% at any three-month interval, were also predictive of significantly increased risk of adverse outcomes, including unplanned hospitalizations.

For this clinical research study, galectin-3 levels were measured in plasma samples that had been collected as part of the PROTECT study. The study enrolled 151 stable heart failure (HF) patients, with an average age of 63 years, who were followed for a median of 10 months. The HF patients who participated in the study had galectin-3 blood levels drawn at four time points during scheduled outpatient physician visits.

Galectin-3 levels independently predicted cardiovascular events even after adjustment for clinically relevant variables such as treatment arm allocation, NT-proBNP level, and kidney function. No effect on galectin-3 levels was observed in association with heart failure medications that provided symptom-related or mortality-related benefits. The BGM Galectin-3(R) test is cleared by the FDA as an aid in assessing the prognosis of patients diagnosed with chronic heart failure when used in conjunction with clinical evaluation.