Study: Biomarker-guided therapy does not appear beneficial for heart failure patients

A medical strategy involving the use of natriuretic peptide as a biomarker does not appear to benefit patients with heart failure, according to researchers.  Their study, called GUIDing Evidence Based Therapy Using Biomarker Intensified Treatment (GUIDE-IT), compared the biomarker-guided strategy to usual care among a group of high-risk heart failure patients and found no difference between the two approaches in terms of hospitalization and heart-related death.  Although the GUIDE-IT study itself was halted in 2016 because it showed no benefit, the researchers have now published the details of their study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. NHLBI funded the study.