Eur Heart J. 2026 Jan 24;47(4):490-499. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf975.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Elevated cardiac troponin levels are a frequent finding in emergency department patients, often without a clear cause. Current high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (cTnT) assays measure intact and fragmented cardiac troponin T (total cTnT) molecules, without distinguishing between them. This study investigated whether measuring only intact and minimally fragmented cTnT (long cTnT) provides additional value for myocardial infarction (MI) identification.
METHODS: Consecutive emergency department patients with standard high-sensitivity cTnT levels (Roche Diagnostics) above the upper reference limit (≥14 ng/L) were recruited. Long cTnT levels were measured using a novel immunoassay. The additional diagnostic value of long cTnT in identifying patients with type 1 MI or any MI was assessed.
RESULTS: A total of 1811 patients participated in the study, 1145 (63.2%) presenting with chest pain or dyspnoea. Overall, 205 (11.3%) had MI, including 148 classified as type 1 MI. Only .7% of patients in the lowest long cTnT tertile (<3.7 ng/L) had type 1 MI. The discriminative ability of long cTnT was superior to total cTnT in identifying patients with MI (area under curve [95% confidence intervals]) for any MI: .833 (.804-.863) vs .782 (.744-.819), and for type 1 MI: .839 (.807-.872) vs .777 (.735-.819), both (P < .001). Integrating the predictive data from long cTnT with total cTnT provided additional value in both reclassification and decision curve analyses, compared to total cTnT data alone.
CONCLUSIONS: The long cTnT assay demonstrated good diagnostic performance in identifying MI in patients with elevated total cTnT levels, with the potential to improve the accuracy of MI diagnosis.
PMID:41579023 | DOI:10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf975