Detection of Early Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction (HFpEF) in Metabolic Syndrome Patients Detected as Part of a National Screening Programme in Middle Aged Subjects

Aims:  T o investigate if community detected Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) is associated with the burden of incipient HFpEF in the community.  Methods and Results: We prospectively studied 148 consecutive MetS patients identified from the Lithuanian High Cardiovascular Risk primary prevention programme and investigated them further for unknown HFpEF through cardiopulmonary stress testing as well as assessment of BNP levels and of arterial stiffness. Subjects with a peak VO 2 value lower than 90% of predicted and/or BNP≥35 ng/l were categorized as having early phase HFpEF. For comparison of this early phase HFpEF with others already clinically diagnosed with HFpEF, patients with both established HFpEF and MetS were selected retrospectively from patients attending our cardiopulmonary stress testing laboratory (n=38). Two thirds of the screening programme-derived MetS population (n=96) demonstrated a reduced exercise capacity and/or an elevated BNP, indicating signs of early HFpEF. Both the clinically diagnosed HFpEF and the screening programme detected MetS group with early HFpEF demonstrated similarly decreased exercise tolerance evaluated by peak oxygen uptake (79.8 ± 22.1% vs 82.7 ± 14.0%, p>0.05). Analysis of arterial markers in the screening programme group revealed statistically significant differences of augmentation index values between groups with and without signs of early HFpEF (p=0.016). Conclusion: A considerable proportion of patients having MetS may be diagnosed with previously undetected early stage HFpEF. The use of objective parameters of exercise capacity and neurohormonal activation might be effectively used for the early detection of HFpEF. Also early HFpEF in this setting is found to be associated with increased arterial stiffness.