Simple Blood Test Could Catch Heart Failure Early in People with Diabetes

A simple blood test that measures a molecule released by the stressed heart may transform how doctors protect millions of people with diabetes from one of the disease’s deadliest complications. A new narrative review published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine brings together the experience of a multidisciplinary panel of experts from ten countries—Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, India, and the United States—who have begun implementing American Diabetes Association guidelines calling for routine NT-proBNP testing to detect heart failure before symptoms ever appear. The review, led by Rodica Pop-Busui and James L. Januzzi, argues that the science behind the test is settled; the real challenge now is translating that science into everyday clinical practice across wildly different health systems.

The biological rationale is compelling. Diabetes and heart failure are tightly intertwined: chronically elevated glucose, insulin resistance, and metabolic inflammation damage the heart muscle and blood vessels, causing many patients to progress rapidly from silent cardiac dysfunction to overt, symptomatic heart failure. Epidemiological analyses, including the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, have shown that diabetes accelerates the progression of heart failure, and meta-analyses confirm a substantially elevated risk of new-onset and recurrent heart failure in people with diabetes. Yet heart failure remains notoriously under-recognized in this population; a systematic review published in the Journal of Cardiac Failure documented how frequently the condition is misdiagnosed, often because early symptoms are vague or attributed to other causes.

NT-proBNP—N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide—is a fragment of a hormone precursor released by heart muscle cells when they are stretched or under pressure. Because the peptide is cleared by the kidneys and is more stable in blood than its cousin BNP, it has become the workhorse biomarker for cardiac stress. Decades of evidence, from the International Collaborative of NT-proBNP study to the Heinz Nixdorf Recall Study, show that elevated concentrations predict cardiovascular events and death, and that NT-proBNP outperforms BNP for predicting first cardiovascular events in the general population. In people with diabetes, serial measurements in trials such as EXAMINE and large biobank analyses from Hong Kong have demonstrated that the biomarker sharply improves prediction of cardiorenal complications, including in patients without any known cardiac disease.

The pivotal shift came when the American Diabetes Association formally endorsed biomarker screening for Stage B heart failure—the asymptomatic phase of cardiac dysfunction defined in the universal classification of heart failure. Under the ADA Standards of Care, measurement of natriuretic peptides is now recommended to identify people with diabetes whose hearts are already straining silently, opening a window for intervention with modern cardioprotective therapies before irreversible damage occurs. Landmark randomized trials underpin this approach: the STOP-HF trial in Ireland showed that natriuretic peptide-based screening combined with collaborative care reduced incident heart failure, while the PONTIAC trial in Austria demonstrated similar benefit in diabetic patients without prior cardiac disease. More recently, the STRONG-DH pilot study tested a risk-based screening and treatment pathway guided by NT-proBNP in diabetes.

What makes the new review distinctive is its pragmatic focus on implementation rather than discovery. The expert panel, convened to share real-world experience, concluded that no single blueprint will work everywhere. Instead, any national or regional early detection program must weigh four parameters: the patient pathway from screening to diagnosis and treatment; the availability of laboratory and specialist resources; the educational needs of frontline clinicians who must interpret and act on test results; and cost-effectiveness within local payment systems. The authors emphasize that a multipronged approach with a clear evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment pathway is essential for NT-proBNP programs to take root globally.

Country-specific experiences illustrate both the promise and the friction of implementation. Consensus statements have emerged from professional societies in Portugal, Switzerland, and Spain, each tailoring screening populations and biomarker thresholds to local epidemiology and health system capacity. In India, real-world data from a tertiary care center demonstrated the feasibility of occult heart failure screening with NT-proBNP in type 2 diabetes, while Irish investigators have documented the prevalence and trajectory of elevated natriuretic peptides in high-risk diabetic populations. In Slovenia, educational initiatives have updated cardiologists and diabetologists on the value of the biomarker, and in the United States, institutional guidelines such as the University of Michigan health system’s protocol for adults with diabetes over fifty show how electronic medical records can embed screening into routine diabetes visits.

The review also confronts the interpretive subtleties that can derail screening programs. NT-proBNP concentrations are influenced by age, sex, renal function, atrial fibrillation, and obesity, and chronic kidney disease—a frequent diabetes complication—can raise levels independently of cardiac status. Studies comparing diagnostic accuracy in chronic kidney disease, quantifying the effect of renal dysfunction on BNP and NT-proBNP ratios, and examining obesity’s impact on diagnostic cut-offs all underscore that thresholds must be fine-tuned rather than applied mechanically. The panel argues that this fine-tuning of the population in scope and the biomarker interpretation thresholds is precisely what will determine whether screening programs are sustainable.

Economics, the panel stresses, may ultimately decide adoption. A series of cost-effectiveness analyses spanning the United States, Brazil, Hong Kong, and China have evaluated whether NT-proBNP-guided screening pays for itself by preventing expensive hospitalizations and advanced disease. Early results suggest that identifying Stage B heart failure and initiating guideline-directed medical therapy—now including SGLT2 inhibitors, which trials like CREDENCE and canagliflozin biomarker studies show also lower NT-proBNP—can be cost-effective, but the calculations depend heavily on local drug prices, laboratory costs, and the structure of primary care. The review’s authors argue that health technology assessment should be built into program design from the outset rather than retrofitted after launch.

The stakes are enormous. The International Diabetes Federation’s latest atlas estimates that well over half a billion adults live with diabetes, a number projected to climb steeply, and each of those individuals carries a markedly elevated risk of progressing to heart failure. Because early identification and management demonstrably improve outcomes, the gap between guideline recommendations and universal practice represents preventable morbidity and death on a global scale. The review’s central message is one of cautious optimism: the biomarker exists, the trials support screening, the guidelines endorse it, and national consensus documents are accumulating. What remains is the unglamorous but decisive work of building pathways, training clinicians, aligning resources, and proving value—so that a routine blood draw at a diabetes check-up becomes, everywhere, an early warning system for the heart.

Subject of Research: Implementation of NT-proBNP biomarker testing for early detection of heart failure in people with diabetes

Article Title: Translating Guidelines into Practice: Implementation of NT-proBNP Testing for Early Heart Failure Detection in Diabetes, a Narrative Review

Article References: Pop-Busui, R., Cebrián-Cuenca, A., Ceponis, J., Da Porto, A., dos Santos, J., Gavina, C., Gastaldi, G., Janež, A., Joshi, A., McDonald, K., Meyer, G., Rotar Pavlič, D., Ükinç, K., & Januzzi, J. L. (2026). Translating Guidelines into Practice: Implementation of NT-proBNP Testing for Early Heart Failure Detection in Diabetes, a Narrative Review. Journal of General Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-026-10791-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11606-026-10791-y

Keywords: NT-proBNP, heart failure, diabetes, Stage B heart failure, biomarker screening, American Diabetes Association guidelines, cardiovascular risk, early detection, implementation, cost-effectiveness, narrative review, cardiometabolic medicine