Serum calcium levels are related to BNP in acute heart failure

Introduction:Serum calcium concentration has a pivotal role in car-diac function. Calcium homeostasys may precipitate AHF. It’s likely tohypothesize a correlation between these two items. We tried to inves-tigate biological relationship (like BNP and serum calcium levels) ofthis pathophysiological relationship. In literature there aren’t majorstudies that investigate association of serum calcium levels and BNP.Materials and Methods:216 consecutive patients admitted in ourdepartment were retrospectively enrolled. In-hospital mortality, hyper-tension, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, chronic heart failure, acute coro-nary syndrome, COPD, sepsis, chronic kidney disease and cancer werecollected as binary variables. Serum calcium levels, BNP and days ofhospitalization were treated as continuous data. The relationship be-tween serum calcium levels and BNP at the admission was analyzedwith multiple regression model, choosing the best-fitting trend line.Results:Mean age was 80 years (±12,55 years), with M:F ratio of 1:1(males: 52.7%). BNP levels had a mean of 1149,36 ng/ml (±1193,44ng/ml). Serum calcium levels had a mean of 8,69 mg/dl (±0,58mg/dl). The best-fitting trendline between the two markers turned outto be an exponential relationship (R2=0,975; p<0.000), with BNP ex-ponentially increasing with the rise of the serum calcium levels.Conclusions:High serum calcium levels are exponentially related to highBNP levels in acute heart failure. This finding could be interesting, raisingthe hypothesis of a role of serum calcium levels in survival to AHF.