尽管心血管疾病的大部分方面的管理取得了进展，但心力衰竭（HF）的发病率和患病率仍然很高。HF影响着英国约一百万人，并且其预后比大多数癌症更为严重。HF患者通常年龄较大，同时伴有复杂的合并症，这使得HF的准确评估具有挑战性。及时的诊断和开始应用循证治疗是预防住院和改善该人群预后的关键。生物标志物已经极大地影响了HF患者的评估和管理方式。在HF研究领域，最受关注的生物标志物是利钠肽（NPs）。自从1980年代发现以来，NPs领域的工作量激增，并已成为日常实践中用于指导HF患者诊断和预后评估的重要临床工具。在本文中，我们将回顾NPs的生理学并研究其生物效应。然后，我们将讨论NPs在HF患者的诊断、管理和预后评估中的作用。我们还将探讨NPs作为潜在治疗药物的作用。© 作者（或其雇主）2023年。未经商业再利用。BMJ出版。

While progress has been made in the management of most aspects of cardiovascular disease, the incidence and prevalence of heart failure (HF) remains high. HF affects around a million people in the UK and has a worse prognosis than most cancers. Patients with HF are often elderly with complex comorbidities, making accurate assessment of HF challenging. A timely diagnosis and initiation of evidence-based treatments are key to prevent hospitalisation and improve outcomes in this population. Biomarkers have dramatically impacted the way patients with HF are evaluated and managed. The most studied biomarkers in HF are natriuretic peptides (NPs). Since their discovery in the 1980s, there has been an explosion of work in the field of NPs and they have become an important clinical tool used in everyday practice to guide diagnosis and prognostic assessment of patients with HF. In this article, we will review the physiology of NPs and study their biological effects. Then, we will discuss the role of NPs in the diagnosis, management and prognostication of patients with HF. We will also explore the role of NPs as a potential therapeutic agent.© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.