Abstract: Objective To explore the serum levels of soluble urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR) and myostatin (MSTN) in the elderly patients with chronic heart failure(CHF) and their relationship with cardiac function and prognosis. Methods A total of 120 patients with CHF admitted to our department from January 2017 to June 2019 were selected as observation group. In the same period, another 100 healthy volunteers were selected as control group in our hospital. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect the serum levels of suPAR and MSTN for the two groups. The CHF patients were followed up for 1 year after discharge, and were divided into poor prognosis group (n=32) and good prognosis group (n=88) according to whether the patients had cardiovascular adverse events. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was performed to analyze the predictive value of serum suPAR and MSTN for the poor prognosis of the CHF patients. Results The levels of serum suPAR, MSTN in the observation group were significantly higher than those in the control group (P<0.05). There were statistically significant differences in serum levels of suPAR, MSTN, N-terminal pro B type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) between different cardiac function classes (P<0.05). Pearson correlation analysis showed that the serum levels of suPAR and MSTN were positively correlated with NT-proBNP, and negatively correlated with LVEF (all P<0.05). The serum levels of suPAR, MSTN, NT-proBNP and LVEF in the poor prognosis group were significantly different from those in the good prognosis group (P<0.05). The ROC curve showed that the sensitivities of serum suPAR, MSTN and the combined detections to predict the poor prognosis of the patients were 0.785, 0.754, 0.908, and the specificities were 0.743, 0.716, 0.779, and the areas under the curve were 0.867, 0.815, 0.912, respectively. Conclusions The serum levels of suPAR and MSTN in the elderly patients with CHF are significantly increased, which are closely related to the patients’ cardiac function classification and clinical prognosis. The combined detection of serum suPAR and MSTN has a high clinical value for the prognosis of the elderly patients with CHF, and can be used as a monitoring indicator of the patient’s condition.

Key words: chronic heart failure, soluble urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor, myostatin