Association between Serum Milk Fat Globule-EGF Factor 8 and Prognosis in Patients with Heart Failure

Objective: Investigating the relationship between serum milk fat globule-EGF factor 8 (MFGE8) and prognosis in patients with heart failure (HF). Methods: This research conducted a prospective observational analysis on patients with HF at Huai’an TCM Hospital, which is affiliated with Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine between September 2021 and September 2022. The main focus was determined as combined result of being readmitted to the hospital for HF or all-cause death within a year. Various methods were utilized to evaluate the relationship between MFGE8 and prognosis, such as least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression (LASSO), logistic regression, generalized additive model (GAM), multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), and random forest. Results: A total of 153 patients were enrolled, and 44 patients had outcome events (28.76%). The MFGE8 at hospital release were significantly lower in patients with primary the main outcome (398 [258, 762] vs. 600 [36, 892], P = 0.002), as was the fold change of MFGE8 at discharge and admission (ΔMFGE8) (4.37 [-73.34, 69.1] vs. 58.6 [30.2, 88.2], P < 0.001). Four variables were chosen using by LASSO regression: hypertension, body mass index, MFGE8 at discharge, and ΔMFGE8. Multivariate logistic regression was implemented using the chosen variables. The results showed that MFGE8 at discharge (beta = -0.001, OR = 1.000, P = 0.039) and ΔMFGE8 (beta = -3.786, OR = 0.022, P = 0.003) were independently associated with primary outcome. The random forest model determined that the ΔMFGE8 is the variable with the highest level of significance (GINI coefficient: 10.64). Conclusion: The presence of Serum MFGE8 is inversely associated with the likelihood of clinical outcome in HF patients, suggesting that it might be a valuable indicator of the prognosis for HF patients.