Critical Diagnostics, San Diego, a biomarker company focused on cardiovascular diseases, and Quest Diagnostics and its subsidiary Berkeley HeartLab, have inked an agreement under which both Quest and Berkeley HeartLab will offer ST2 testing services based on Critical Diagnostics’ Presage ST2 Assay.
Critical Diagnostics has also signed an agreement with Laboratory Corporation of America, (LabCorp), to offer testing of the Presage ST2 Assay.
Combined, these two diagnostic market leaders perform some one-and-a-half million tests each day.
The Presage ST2 Assay is FDA cleared for use in assessing the prognosis of patients diagnosed with chronic heart failure. According to the American Heart Association, heart failure affects some 6 million Americans with 600,000 new diagnoses each year.
Clinical studies have demonstrated that high levels of soluble ST2 are predictive of adverse patient outcomes and death. For instance, chronic heart failure patients with ST2 levels above the standard cutpoint, have a three times greater risk of 30-day rehospitalization or mortality.
Unlike many other cardiac biomarkers, ST2 levels change quickly in response to changes in the patient’s condition—thus helping physicians make informed decisions on an appropriate course of action to take and, if needed, to quickly adjust care.
Prognostic information from soluble ST2 is independent of and complimentary to natriuretic peptide markers like BNP and NT-proBNP, and unlike natriuretic peptide markers, is not adversely affected by such confounding factors as age, gender, body mass index and impaired renal failure.
[Source: Critical Diagnostics]
