Published online Jan 19, 2024. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v14.i1.53
Peer-review started: November 6, 2023
First decision: November 16, 2023
Revised: November 25, 2023
Accepted: December 21, 2023
Article in press: December 21, 2023
Published online: January 19, 2024
Processing time: 74 Days and 1.7 Hours
Anxiety and depression (A&D) are common in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF). While extensive research on the general demographic characteristics and A&D data in patients with CHF has been conducted, research on myocardial markers and inflammatory factor levels remains limited. Uncovering the relationship between myocardial markers, inflammatory factor levels, and the degree of A&D in patients with CHF can further supplement and assist in evaluating and classifying A&D severity in patients.
The differential levels of myocardial markers and inflammatory factors depending on A&D severity in patients with CHF could serve as objective evidence to assist clinicians in assessing and classifying the extent of A&D. This could correct for the subjectivity of the general assessment scales, facilitating a more precise distinction between CHF patients with different degrees of A&D, enabling physicians to better manage and rationally allocate medical resources, and providing the potential for personalized treatment.
We classified patients with CHF with varying degrees of A&D based on myocardial markers and inflammatory factor levels and showed that some factors had good discriminative ability, providing the possibility of establishing and assisting in the evaluation of A&D severity in patients with CHF based on biochemical markers.
We further explored the inter-group differences in myocardial and inflammatory indicators and showed their ability to predict A&D severity in patients with CHF using regression and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) analyses.
Left ventricular ejection fraction, N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide, and interleukin-6 were used in combination to predict and classify 233 patients with CHF in this study into no/mild- and moderate/severe-A&D and achieved good results (AUROC = 0.875, 95% confidence interval: 0.820-0.929).
Based on our retrospective analysis, we propose that the combination of myocardial and inflammatory factor levels could assist in assessing and classifying the severity of A&D in patients with CHF.
We plan to further combine other biochemical markers, such as hormone levels, with these classification-effective factors and apply targeted interventions to observe patient outcomes and evaluate changes in A&D severity among patients. This will help to validate our preliminary findings and investigate the potential roles of these biochemical markers in guiding CHF management.