WALTHAM, Mass., Aug. 30, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BG Medicine, Inc. (Nasdaq:BGMD), a company focused on the development and commercialization of novel cardiovascular diagnostics, announced today that the study, “Galectin-3, a Marker of Cardiac Fibrosis, Predicts Incident Heart Failure in the Community,” was published online in the current issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology1 (JACC). The study, conducted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) Framingham Heart Study, was designed to determine whether elevated levels of galectin-3 in the population at large identify those who are at increased risk for the development of heart failure. Galectin-3 levels were measured in blood specimens collected from 1996-1998 as part of a routine examination of 3,353 participants enrolled in the NHLBI-supported Framingham Offspring Cohort. The study demonstrated that men and women with baseline blood levels of galectin-3 in the highest quartile had heart failure incidence rates that were more than twice as high as those of all other study participants, over a ten year follow-up period.
