Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Medicine, Yong Loo-Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (M.Y.C., M.E., S.H.T., C.L.D., L.H.L., W.-M.S., J.P.L., C.-H.L., R.S.Y.F., M.A.A.-J., A.M.R.)
  • 2 Christchurch Heart Institute, Department of Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand (J.W.P., R.T., C.P., A.P., A.M.R.)
  • 3 Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore (H.-H.H., J.-F.P.)
  • 4 Changi General Hospital, Singapore (S.-C.C.)
  • 5 Sarawak Heart Institute, Kuching, Malaysia (A.F., Y.-Y.O.)
Circulation, 2020 10 13;142(15):1408-1421.
PMID: 32885678 DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.119.045158

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Heart failure (HF) is the most common long-term complication of acute myocardial infarction (MI). Understanding plasma proteins associated with post-MI HF and their gene expression may identify new candidates for biomarker and drug target discovery.

METHODS: We used aptamer-based affinity-capture plasma proteomics to measure 1305 plasma proteins at 1 month post-MI in a New Zealand cohort (CDCS [Coronary Disease Cohort Study]) including 181 patients post-MI who were subsequently hospitalized for HF in comparison with 250 patients post-MI who remained event free over a median follow-up of 4.9 years. We then correlated plasma proteins with left ventricular ejection fraction measured at 4 months post-MI and identified proteins potentially coregulated in post-MI HF using weighted gene co-expression network analysis. A Singapore cohort (IMMACULATE [Improving Outcomes in Myocardial Infarction through Reversal of Cardiac Remodelling]) of 223 patients post-MI, of which 33 patients were hospitalized for HF (median follow-up, 2.0 years), was used for further candidate enrichment of plasma proteins by using Fisher meta-analysis, resampling-based statistical testing, and machine learning. We then cross-referenced differentially expressed proteins with their differentially expressed genes from single-cell transcriptomes of nonmyocyte cardiac cells isolated from a murine MI model, and single-cell and single-nucleus transcriptomes of cardiac myocytes from murine HF models and human patients with HF.

RESULTS: In the CDCS cohort, 212 differentially expressed plasma proteins were significantly associated with subsequent HF events. Of these, 96 correlated with left ventricular ejection fraction measured at 4 months post-MI. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis prioritized 63 of the 212 proteins that demonstrated significantly higher correlations among patients who developed post-MI HF in comparison with event-free controls (data set 1). Cross-cohort meta-analysis of the IMMACULATE cohort identified 36 plasma proteins associated with post-MI HF (data set 2), whereas single-cell transcriptomes identified 15 gene-protein candidates (data set 3). The majority of prioritized proteins were of matricellular origin. The 6 most highly enriched proteins that were common to all 3 data sets included well-established biomarkers of post-MI HF: N-terminal B-type natriuretic peptide and troponin T, and newly emergent biomarkers, angiopoietin-2, thrombospondin-2, latent transforming growth factor-β binding protein-4, and follistatin-related protein-3, as well.

CONCLUSIONS: Large-scale human plasma proteomics, cross-referenced to unbiased cardiac transcriptomics at single-cell resolution, prioritized protein candidates associated with post-MI HF for further mechanistic and clinical validation.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.