Level and clinical significance of serum bFGF in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy

Objective: To detect the level of serum basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM) and analyze its clinical significance. Methods: This is a prospective study. From June 2018 to June 2021, 244 patients diagnosed with ICM in the department of cardiology of Tianyou Hospital Affiliated to Wuhan University of Science and Technology and 244 healthy people who underwent physical examination in the physical examination center of our hospital during the same period were enrolled as the research subjects. Serum bFGF level was measured by ELISA kit, and the ICM patients were divided into a high bFGF group (180 cases) and a low bFGF group (64 cases) according to the cut-off value 56.83 obtained from X-tile software analysis, and the clinical data of the two groups were compared. In addition, according to the 12-month survival, the patients were grouped into a poor prognosis group (56 cases) and a good prognosis group (188 cases). Then, univariate and multivariate proportional hazards model (COX regression) analyses were applied to analyze the influencing factors of poor prognosis in ICM patients. Results: In the ICM group, there were more patients with hypertension and diabetes, and patients had higher levels of HbA1c, blood urea nitrogen, creatinine and uric acid, and lower levels of eGFR and bFGF than patients in the control group (P < 0.05). The 12-month endpoint event rate in the low bFGF group was 54.69%, which was significantly higher than 11.67% in the high bFGF group (P < 0.05). The left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in the low bFGF group was significantly lower than that in the high bFGF group, and the bFGF group also had more patients with cardiac function grade IV (P < 0.05). Multivariate COX regression analysis showed that age, diabetes, LVEF and low bFGF were independent influencing factors of poor prognosis in patients with ICM (P < 0.05). After adjusting for age, diabetes and LVEF, patients with low bFGF had a higher risk of poor prognosis than those with high bFGF (HR=4.416, 95 CI%: 1.977-9.863, P < 0.05). Conclusion: The serum expression of bFGF in ICM patients is low, and the risk of poor prognosis is higher in patients with low bFGF, suggesting that serum bFGF level has a certain value in the prognosis evaluation of ICM patients.