Obesity does not influence the correlation between exercise capacity and serum NT-proBNP levels in chronic heart failure

Recent studies have shown that obesity is an independent predictor of lower N-terminal pro-BNP (NT-proBNP) levels and raised concerns about the validity of this biomarker in obese subjects. We evaluated the influence of obesity (body mass index ≥ 30 kg/m2) on the correlation between exercise capacity and serum NT-proBNP levels in 100 chronic heart failure (CHF) patients referred for cardiopulmonary exercise testing. Circulating NT-proBNP levels correlated well with lean body mass-adjusted peak oxygen consumption (VO2) in the entire cohort (R = − 0.72, p < 0.001) and in the obese (R = − 0.71, p < 0.001) and non-obese (R = − 0.72, p < 0.001) subgroups. There was no significant difference between the correlation coefficients of the two subgroups (p = 0.934). In conclusion NT-proBNP levels predict exercise capacity in CHF patients irrespective of the presence of obesity.