Canine cardiac biomarkers: nature, activity and use

Detweiler and Patterson's seminal study 57 years ago showed that the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in dogs in a teaching hospital was 11% [1], and even more recently, the prevalence of cardiac diseases in dogs worldwide was 10%, with chronic valvular heart disease accounting for 75% of all cases [2,3,4].As time passed, the diagnostic modalities of canine cardiac illnesses also gained momentum starting from right heart catheterization and angiocardiography, radiography, electrocardiography, and echocardiography [1,5,6] to recently developed cardiac biomarkers and metabolomics [7,8].However, wide variability among different dog breeds may also mislead the interpretation of ECG, echocardiography, and thoracic radiograph [9,10,11].Thus, the identification and monitoring of blood-based cardiac biomarkers along with or in combination with other diagnostic tools could be a