Heart failure epidemic: Disease burden, novel biomarkers, and risk prediction

This thesis consists of three parts. The first part discusses the heart failure (HF) epidemic in the Rotterdam Study cohort over three decades and the population-level contribution of modifiable risk factors to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). The second part explores the potential risk factors of HF and other CVDs from an etiological perspective. Novel biomarkers, including female reproductive factors, plasma amyloid-β, aortic valve calcium, and thoracic aortic diameter are addressed in this section. The mediating effects of metabolic disorders on the link between pregnancy loss and later risk of HF and other CVDs are also discussed. The third part mainly describes how to improve the risk prediction of HF in the general population by adding cardiac biomarkers to traditional risk prediction models as well as using advanced methodologies such as machine learning algorithms.