Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Cardiac troponins in dogs and cats - what you need to know
By Langhorn, R & Willesen, J L·Published in Journal of veterinary internal medicine·2016·Department of Veterinary Clinical and Animal Sciences·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Cardiac Troponins in Dogs and Cats.
Plain-English summary
Cardiac troponins are special proteins that can indicate damage to the heart muscle in dogs and cats. While they help measure how much injury the heart has sustained, they don't explain why the injury happened or how the troponins were released. These markers are becoming more important in understanding heart health, even in pets with non-heart-related issues, and they can help identify animals at a higher risk of serious problems. As testing methods improve, we are learning that heart injury is more common than we thought, but more research is needed to see if treating pets with high troponin levels can actually improve their chances of recovery. Overall, while troponins are useful for assessing heart health, we still need to learn more about how best to use this information in treatment.
Abstract
Cardiac troponins are sensitive and specific markers of myocardial injury. The troponin concentration can be thought of as a quantitative measure of the degree of injury sustained by the heart, however, it provides no information on the cause of injury or the mechanism of troponin release. Conventionally, the cardiac troponins have been used for diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction in humans and have become the gold standard biomarkers for this indication. They have become increasingly recognized as an objective measure of cardiomyocyte status in both cardiac and noncardiac disease, supplying additional information to that provided by echocardiography and ECG. Injury to cardiomyocytes can occur through a variety of mechanisms with subsequent release of troponins. Independent of the underlying disease or the mechanism of troponin release, the presence of myocardial injury is associated with an increased risk of death. As increasingly sensitive assays are introduced, the frequent occurrence of myocardial injury is becoming apparent, and our understanding of its causes and importance is constantly evolving. Presently troponins are valuable for detecting a subgroup of patients with higher risk of death. Future research is needed to clarify whether troponins can serve as monitoring tools guiding treatment, whether administering more aggressive treatment to patients with evidence of myocardial injury is beneficial, and whether normalizing of troponin concentrations in patients presenting with evidence of myocardial injury is associated with reduced risk of death.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26681537/