Sex-Specific Thresholds for Cardiac Biomarkers—We Need to Move Forward

Abstract

Cardiovascular biomarkers play a major diagnostic role for cardiologists. Different biomarkers provide different insights into a variety of cardiovascular conditions and in doing so they improve diagnosis and management. Often, these biomarkers are deployed without carefully evaluating the use of sex-specific cut off values. It is now becoming apparent that the use of such cut off values can improve prognostication and discrimination in some clinical situations. This review paper will focus on the data indicating that there is benefit to the use of sex-specific thresholds. It should be clear that these thresholds will vary depending on the analyte being measured and the specific clinical indication for which the patients are being evaluated; and sex-specific cut off values may be important in some situations but not others. Nonetheless, it is now clear that when evaluating sex-specific cut off values, one often finds benefit. We will highlight these situations using specific cardiac biomarkers as examples.