Identification of Candidate Biomarkers of Acute Aortic Dissection

Acute aortic dissection (AAD) is a common fatal disease that affects the aorta and requires an urgent clinical intervention. A clinical feature of AAD is the characteristic tearing retrosternal pain often confused with that of myocardial infarction. In type A after Stanford, the biluminal progression is in the ascending aorta, the lethality of all untreated patients is about 50% within the first 48 hours. Most of AAD patients do not present a known connective tissue disorder. This makes the diagnosis more difficult and often late established. Similar as in myocardial infarction, a rapid test for the diagnosis establishment would be vitally helpful. This review summarizes, with examples taken from recent patents, novel strategies maintaining the development and validation of biomarkers of acute aortic dissection and compares them to known biomarkers of myocardial infarction.