Biomarkers assessment in patients with Chagas disease and systemic arterial hypertension.

Chagas disease (ChD) and systemic arterial hypertension (SAH) are two severe comorbidities that lead to mortality and a reduction in people's quality of life, with an impact on public health. The aim of this study was to quantify the biomarkers of cardiac injury in patients with ChD and SAH. Eighty patients were divided into four groups: 20 hypertensive patients, 20 ChD-hypertensive patients, 20 ChD patients, and 20 normotensive volunteers; all of them came from outpatient's public health services. Among the evaluated markers for cardiac lesions (creatine kinase, creatine kinase-MB isoform, myoglobin, high-sensitive cardiac troponin T[hs-cTnT], B-type natriuretic peptide [BNP], and C-reactive protein), hs-cTnT and BNP were the most appropriate. Importantly, our results showed that the cut off point for hs-cTnT could be < 0.007 ng/mL, which could lead to the early detection of myocardial lesions. The BNP and hs-cTnT levels were high only in the ChD and ChD-hypertensive patient groups, suggesting that Chagas' disease may play an important role in the increase of these biomarkers. ChD patients, hypertensive or not, with cardiac or cardiodigestive involvement presented significantly higher values of hs-cTnT (p < 0.001) and BNP (p = 0.001) than ChD patients with indeterminate and digestive forms, which strengthens the validation of these markers for the follow-up of clinical cardiac form of ChD. This study suggests that the BNP and hs-cTnT can be used as possible indirect biomarkers of cardiac damage. In addition, the reference values of these biomarkers in Chagas and hypertensive cardiomyopathies should be better understood with further studies.