insufficiency 4 may be misleading because high urinary creat- inine levels may predict better survival because of their association with greater dietary protein intake 7 or other factors unrelated to muscle mass. Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, MD, PhD Ryan Kilpatrick, MS Joel D. Kopple, MD Division of Nephrology and Hypertension Los Angeles Biomedical Institute at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center Torrance, California REFERENCES 1. Kalantar-Zadeh K, Kopple JD, Kilpatrick RD, et al: Association of morbid obesity and weight change over time with cardiovascular survival in hemodialysis population. Am J Kidney Dis 46:489-500, 2005 2. Rexrode KM, Carey VJ, Hennekens CH, et al: Abdomi- nal adiposity and coronary heart disease in women. JAMA 280:1843-1848, 1998 3. Kalantar-Zadeh K, Abbott KC, Kronenberg F, Anker SD, Horwich TB, Fonarow GC: Epidemiology of dialysis patients and heart failure patients. Semin Nephrol (in press) 4. Beddhu S, Pappas LM, Ramkumar N, Samore M: Effects of body size and body composition on survival in hemodialysis patients. J Am Soc Nephrol 14:2366-2372, 2003 5. Walser M: Creatinine excretion as a measure of protein nutrition in adults of varying age. JPEN J Parenter Enteral Nutr 11:S73-S78, 1987 (suppl 5) 6. Kopple JD, Greene T, Chumlea WC, et al: Relation- ship between nutritional status and the glomerular filtration rate: Results from the MDRD Study. Kidney Int 57:1688- 1703, 2000 7. Shinaberger CS, Kilpatrick RD, McAllister CJ, Kopple JD, Kalantar-Zadeh K: Association between changes in urea kinetic based protein intake over time and mortality in hemodialysis patients. Am J Kidney Dis 45:33A, 2005 (abstr) Originally published online as doi:10.1053/j.ajkd.2005.10.015 on December 6, 2005. © 2005 by the National Kidney Foundation, Inc. doi:10.1053/j.ajkd.2005.10.015 USE OF AMINO-TERMINAL PRO-B–TYPE NATRIURETIC PEPTIDE TO PREDICT CORONARY DISEASE To the Editor: deFilippi et al 1 presented data for amino-terminal pro-B– type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in a chronic kidney disease cohort essentially similar to our own. 2 They used receiver operating characteristic curve analysis to assess the ability of NT-proBNP to predict the presence of prior coro- nary artery disease (CAD) and obtained an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.69. We assessed the ability of natriuretic peptides to predict CAD in our cohort. AUCs of 0.603 (P = 0.0052) and 0.661 (P  0.001) were achieved for NT- proBNP and BNP, respectively: both significant and not dissimilar to values obtained by deFilippi et al 1 (Fig 1). Fig 1. Receiver operating characteristic curve anal- ysis shows the ability of natriuretic peptides to predict the presence of CAD in patients with chronic kidney disease. CORRESPONDENCE 194