Study Status: Terminated
Recruit Status: Unknown status
Study Type: Observational
Official Title: Using Novel Blood and Imaging Biomarkers to Better Understand the Pathophysiology of Paediatric Dilated Cardiomyopathy
Brief Summary:
This will be a cross-sectional, observational study.
Null hypothesis:
There is no difference in the amount of extracellular volume (ECV or scarring) in the hearts of patients with heart failure as compared to control subjects.
Heart failure occurs when the heart muscle has become too weak to work properly. It is associated with an increase in the amount of connective tissue (collagen) which replaces dead heart muscle cells (scarring). Currently a biopsy of the muscle is the only way to measure the amount of scarring. This is invasive and rarely done in children. Because of this, it is difficult to measure the amount of scarring in a particular patient or disease process, which is important for improving our understanding and treatment of the disease.
Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive imaging tool which is routinely used to look at areas of local scarring in heart muscle. Because the scarring is so widespread in paediatric patients, we have not been able to use this method previously. Now new imaging techniques allow us to look at widespread scarring but these have not yet been validated in children.
We plan to use late gadolinium enhancement (T1 mapping) to measure the amount of scarring in patients with heart failure (we have evidence that their heart biopsies show increased amounts of scar tissue) and children having MRI scans for other reasons. We will use measures of function including echocardiography and 6 minute walk test to compare to the amount of scarring. This will help us to know whether the amount of scarring will be clinically useful.
We will look at the amount of various proteins in the