Cardiovascular Pharmacology: Open Access

Abstract

Early Subclinical Biomarkers in Onco-Cardiology to Prevent Cardiac Death

Yajun Gu, Bumei Zhang, Hongwei Fu, Yichao Wang and Yunde Liu

Recent oncologic treatment has been associated with cardiovascular complications, such as hypertension, metabolic derangements, thrombosis, arrhythmia, and even cardiac death. Careful attention to detailed cardiac evaluation is required to optimize the anticancer treatment and prevent heart failure of patients undergoing chemoradiotherapy. Classical cardiovascular biomarkers like ANP, BNP, ProANP, NT-ProBNP, hsTnI, hsTnT, adropin, copeptin, and ET-1 are indicative of toxic effects in cancer patients with radiation, chemotherapy, and neoadjuvant treatment. Recently, miRNAs (i.e., miR-29, miR-146, miR-208, and miR-216) in the peripheral blood or exosome-derived miRNAs are attractive as novel biomarkers for drug-induced cardiotoxicity due to their highly conserved sequence and stability in body fluids. The anticancer treatment could lead to detectable increases of miRNAs in the absence of traditional cardiac biomarkers or cardiac remodeling. Circulating cardiovascular biomarkers provide earlier detection of cardiotoxicity from cancer treatments before irreversible damage occurs. An increased understanding of the potential roles and mechanisms may help to reveal the crosstalk between cancer therapy and cardiac issues.