Rationale, design and baseline characteristics of the MyoVasc study: A prospective cohort study investigating development and progression of heart failure

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a poly-aetiological syndrome with large heterogeneity regarding clinical presentation, pathophysiology, clinical outcome and response to therapy. The MyoVasc study (NCT04064450) is an epidemiological cohort study investigating the development and progression of HF.

Methods: The primary objective of the study is (a) to improve the understanding of the pathomechanisms of HF across the full spectrum of clinical presentation, (b) to investigate the current clinical classifications of HF, and (c) to identify and characterize homogeneous subgroups regarding disease development using a systems-oriented approach. Worsening of HF, that is, the composite of transition from asymptomatic to symptomatic HF, hospitalization due to HF, or cardiac death, was defined as the primary endpoint of the study. During a six-year follow-up period, all study participants receive a highly standardized, biannual five-hour examination in a dedicated study centre, including detailed cardiovascular phenotyping and biobanking of various biomaterials. Annual follow-up examinations are conducted by computer-assisted telephone interviews recording comprehensively the participants´ health status, including subsequent validation and adjudication of adverse events.

Results: In total, 3289 study participants (age range: 35 to 84 years; female sex: 36.8%) including the full range of HF stages were enrolled from 2013 to 2018. Approximately half of the subjects (n=1741) presented at baseline with symptomatic HF (i.e. HF stage C/D). Among these, HF with preserved ejection fraction was the most frequent phenotype.

Conclusions: By providing a large-scale, multi-dimensional biodatabase with sequential, comprehensive medical-technical (sub)clinical phenotyping and multi-omics characterization (i.e. genome, transcriptome, proteome, lipidome, metabolome and exposome), the MyoVasc study will help to advance our knowledge about the heterogeneous HF syndrome by a systems-oriented biomedicine approach.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov; NCT04064450.