Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Cardiac troponin I levels in cats with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
By Connolly, D J et al.·Published in Journal of feline medicine and surgery·2003·Department of Veterinary Clinical Science, United Kingdom·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Cardiac troponin I in cats with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
- Species:
- cat
Plain-English summary
A group of 16 cats diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a condition where the heart muscle thickens, had their blood tested for a protein called cardiac troponin I (cTnI). The results showed that these cats had significantly higher levels of cTnI compared to 18 healthy control cats, indicating heart muscle injury. This suggests that measuring cTnI levels could help veterinarians identify cats with heart problems more accurately. While the study found a weak link between heart muscle thickness and cTnI levels, the main takeaway is that high cTnI levels can signal heart issues in cats.
People also search for: cat heart disease symptoms · hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in cats · elevated troponin levels in cats
Abstract
The molecular structure of cardiac troponin I (cTnI) is highly conserved across mammalian species and assays developed for its measurement in human patients have been validated in a number of veterinary species. A raised concentration of circulating cTnI is a sensitive and specific marker of cardiac myocyte injury. Raised levels have been documented in a variety of cardiac diseases in both human and veterinary patients. This study compared serum cTnI concentrations between 16 cats diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) using echocardiography and 18 control cats. The results show that cats with HCM have significantly higher concentration of serum cTnI (median 0.95 ng/ml, range 0.2-4.1 ng/ml) than control cats (median <0.2 ng/ml, range <0.2-0.25 ng/ml) [P<0.0001]. Furthermore in cats with cardiomyopathy a weak correlation was found between the thickness of the left ventricular freewall in diastole measured by ultrasound and serum cTnI concentration (r(2)=0.28;P=0.036). These results suggest that measurement of serum cTnI concentration may enable cats with cardiomyopathy to be distinguished from normal cats using the assay described here.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12878148/