Major European medical center includes Critical Diagnostics' Presage ST2 Assay for cardiac care

Critical Diagnostics, a U.S.-based biomarker company focused on cardiovascular diseases, announced today that a major European medical center, Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol in Barcelona Spain, is now using the company's Presage® ST2 Assay for routine care and management of their heart failure patients.

“It is a clear example of translational medicine and allows us to be pioneers in this field”

"This commitment by Dr. Bayes-Genis is a powerful endorsement regarding the clinical value of the Presage ST2 Assay," says James Snider, President of Critical Diagnostics.

The Presage® ST2 Assay quantitatively measures the level of ST2 in blood. ST2 has been shown to be a significant predictor of mortality as well as all-cause hospitalization, mortality due to cardiovascular disease, and hospitalization due to cardiovascular disease. ST2 is prognostic for clinically important outcomes in addition to all-cause mortality.

"Different groups worldwide are working together to study the role of ST2 in humans and our hospital is the first to apply it in day-to-day operation using the marker in the context of routine care for our patients," notes Dr. Antoni Bayes-Genis, head of Cardiology Service at Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol, and renowned expert in cardiac biomarkers. "Our data indicates that it refines the prognosis and allows us to separate patients who will evolve poorly with those who are likely to have a good outcome.

"It is a clear example of translational medicine and allows us to be pioneers in this field," adds Bayes-Genis. "We now have a second generation of heart failure markers. The first generation were the natriuretic peptides. But we are seeing that ST2 is a marker as powerful or more than natriuretic peptides for predicting death. If we know which patients have higher levels of ST2, we must be able to handle them differently and obtain lower levels of this protein. Therefore, we will establish a protocol for patients who are at high risk based on this analysis."

"The Presage ST2 Assay helps clinicians assess patient prognosis in order to better personalize their care," states James Snider. "By selecting the most appropriate treatments and interventions for each patient, a physician can maximize the clinical benefit from increasingly limited healthcare resources."