Heart failure (HF) is a complex disease in which cardiomyocyte injury leads to a cascade of inflammatory and
fibrosis pathway activation, thereby causing decrease in cardiac function. As a result, several biomolecules are released which can be identified easily in circulating body fluids. The complex biological processes involved in the development and worsening of HF require an early treatment strategy to stop deterioration of cardiac function. Circulating
biomarkers provide not only an ideal platform to detect subclinical changes, their clinical application also offers the opportunity to monitor disease treatment. Many of these
biomarkers can be quantified with high sensitivity; allowing their clinical application to be evaluated beyond diagnostic purposes as potential tools for HF prognosis. Though the field of
biomarkers is dominated by
protein molecules, non-coding RNAs (
microRNAs, long non-coding RNAs, and
circular RNAs) are novel and promising
biomarker candidates that encompass several ideal characteristics required in the
biomarker field. The application of genetic
biomarkers as
genetic risk scores in disease prognosis, albeit in its infancy, holds promise to improve disease risk estimation. Despite the multitude of
biomarkers that have been available and identified, the majority of novel
biomarker candidates are not cardiac-specific, and instead may simply be a readout of systemic
inflammation or other
pathological processes. Thus, the true value of novel
biomarker candidates in HF prognostication remains unclear. In this article, we discuss the current state of application of
protein, genetic as well as
non-coding RNA biomarkers in HF risk prognosis.