Low ALT Levels Associated with Poor Outcomes in 8700 Hospitalized Heart Failure Patients

Abstract

Sarcopenia and frailty are causes for morbidity and mortality amongst heart failure (HF) patients. Low alanine transaminase (ALT) is a marker for these syndromes and, therefore, could serve as a biomarker for the prognostication of HF patients. We performed a retrospective analysis of all consecutive hospitalized HF patients in our institute in order to find out whether low ALT values would be a biomarker for poor outcomes. Our cohort included 11,102 patients, 35.6% categorized as heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. We excluded patients with ALT > 40 IU/L and cirrhosis. 8700 patients were followed for a median duration of 22 months and included in a univariate analysis. Patients with ALT p p p p = 0.003). Hospitalization length was longer in the low-ALT group (4 vs. 3 days, p p = 0.006). The in-hospital mortality rate was higher in the low-ALT group (6.5% vs. 3.9%; p p p < 0.001). Low ALT plasma level, a biomarker for sarcopenia and frailty, can assist clinicians in prognostic stratification of heart failure patients.

Keywords

• heart failure
• sarcopenia
• frailty
• ALT
• prognosis