Vet World   Vol.10   September-2017  Article-11

N-terminal-pro brain natriuretic peptides in dogs and cats: A technical and clinical review

Background and Aim: Biomarkers are quantitative indicators of biological processes performed by an organ or system. In recent years, natriuretic peptides (NPs) have emerged as important tools in the diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of heart diseases. Research has shown that serum and plasma levels of N-terminal pro brain NP (NT-proBNP) in dogs and cats are the only biomarkers that afford to diagnose and monitor congestive processes and, indirectly, the myocardial function of small animals. The present review discusses the peer-reviewed specialized literature about NT-proBNP and presents and compares the potential clinical applications of this NP in veterinary medicine of small animals, considering diagnosis, follow-up, and prognosis of myocardial or systemic diseases. The relevance of NT-proBNP is associated with sample stability, easy determination in laboratory, sensitivity, accuracy, and the possibility to analyze myocardial function. These advantages are specially important when NT-proBNP is compared with other cardiac biomarkers, mostly those that indicate the integrity of the myocardial cell. Fast NT-proBNP assays are marketed today and may be used in association with complementary tests. Together, these methods are an important source of information in differential diagnosis of heart and lung diseases as well in the early diagnosis of cardiopathy in dogs and cats, proving valuable tools in treatment and prognosis.

Keywords: cardiac biomarkers, cats, congestive heart failure, dogs, NT-proBPN.

How to cite this article: de Lima GV, Ferreira FS (2017) N-terminal-pro brain natriuretic peptides in dogs and cats: A technical and clinical review, Veterinary World, 10(9): 1072-1082.

Received: 04-05-2017  Accepted: 18-08-2017     Published online:

Corresponding author: Felipp da Silveira Ferreira   E-mail: felipp.sf@gmail.com

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2017.1072-1082

Copyright: de Lima and Ferreira, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.