Biomarker profile and risk stratification in cardiovascular disease during pregnancy: Action to move forward

Abstract

Emerging role of novel and traditional biomarkers in the diagnosis and risk stratification of pregnant women with cardiovascular disease (CVD) are needed to raise the standard of care and optimizing management. Biomarkers that reliably distinguish women at high risk for complication would provide a novel biomarker-guided management approach and risk stratification strategy. The role of cardiac biomarkers during pregnancy remain a topic of interest and still need significant investigation with large sample size study. In the clinical trials and researches, pregnant women are usually excluded to avoid adverse effects of the studied medications on the health of these patients and their fetuses. Currently we are in the era of moving toward prevention of CVD more than focusing on the management of established events. Biomarkers can be used to predict the new incidence of CVD or to predict the outcomes of the previously established cardiac events. Depend on such data, enrollment of pregnant women in clinical trials and researches can be encouraged to identify biomarkers profile associated with different CVD to be used in risk stratification for future prevention of such events during pregnancy. In this article we will review some of the evidence about role of biomarkers in pregnant patients with CVD for risk stratification.

Keywords

• Biomarkers
• Cardiovascular disease
• Pregnancy
• Congenital heart disease
• Risk stratification
• Clinical trials