ATTR amyloidosis, particularly senile systemic amyloidosis, is highly prevalent among patients with biopsy-proven cardiac amyloidosis, highlighting the need for increased awareness given emerging targeted therapies.
Supports ATTR typing awareness in biopsy-proven cardiac amyloidosis; leaves open generalizability and practice implications pending larger studies.
BACKGROUND: Cardiac amyloidosis had been considered to be an incurable disease; however, new disease-modifying therapeutic approaches have succeeded in ameliorating the disease. Therefore, early and precise diagnosis based on the amyloid precursor protein is extremely important. OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence rates of systemic amyloidoses underlying cardiac amyloidosis. METHODS: The types of amyloidosis in 53 consecutive patients with endomyocardial biopsy-proven cardiac amyloidosis were analyzed by Congo red and immunohistochemical staining. If staining for TTR was positive, direct DNA sequencing of the entire TTR gene was performed. RESULTS: ATTR amyloidosis was the most common (32/53 patients, 60.4%). The ATTR amyloidosis subtypes were senile systemic amyloidosis (SSA) 11, familial ATTR 10, and genotype unknown 11. AL amyloidosis was the next most frequent (19/53, 35.8%). CONCLUSIONS: ATTR amyloidosis, especially SSA, might be much more common than previously thought. With the development of new drugs targeting the ATTR amyloidosis, major efforts should be made to increase awareness of senile systemic amyloidosis among cardiologists.
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Nakagawa et al. (2013) studied this question.
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