Given that OPN at day 3 of ICU treatment is a strong predictor of mortality risk, one could speculate that its use might be implemented into established scoring systems together with markers that detect the initial cause of the critical illness leading to ICU admission (e.g. APRIL, which has recently been demonstrated to specifically detect sepsis [23], or BNP as a marker of heart failure [51]). This evidence concerns the gene SPP1 and heart failure.