According to trial results made public on Saturday, the popular diabetes medication Farxiga from AstraZeneca significantly decreased the risk of hospitalisation and mortality in persons with all forms of heart failure, allowing for a large rise in the number of patients who potentially benefit.
The medication is a member of the SGLT2 inhibitor class of drugs, which were initially authorised to treat type 2 diabetes. Since then, studies have demonstrated the medications’ ability to treat patients with chronic kidney and heart disease as well as to stave off heart attacks.
The medication is a member of a group of drugs known as SGLT2 inhibitors, which were initially authorised to treat type 2 diabetes. Since then, it has been demonstrated that the medications help people with chronic kidney and heart disease and lower their risk of heart attacks.
According to the manufacturer, Farxiga is the first heart failure drug to demonstrate mortality benefit across all kinds of heart failure.
At the European Society of Cardiology convention in Barcelona, comprehensive findings from the “DELIVER” research, which evaluated Farxiga in patients with a type of heart failure characterised by a modestly reduced or preserved ejection fraction, were presented. The heart’s ability to deliver oxygen-rich blood to the body is gauged by the ejection fraction.
Farxiga achieved the main objective of the trial, resulting in an 18% statistically significant decrease in the risk of heart-related death, hospitalisation for heart failure, and urgent heart failure visits.
According to Ruud Dobber, who oversees AstraZeneca’s biopharma division, if authorities approve of broader heart failure use based on these findings, Farxiga’s addressable patient group will increase by 50%.
In a study last year involving identical patients, Jardiance, a competitor medicine from Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly & Company, fared similarly.
Farxiga lowered the risk of mortality from cardiovascular reasons, including heart attacks, by 14% and the risk of death from any cause by 10%, according to a pooled analysis of DELIVER and another trial involving almost 11,000 heart failure patients. Additionally, the medication reduced hospital admissions for heart failure by almost a third.
Pardeep Jhund, a professor of cardiology at the University of Glasgow who worked on the investigation, noted that the advantage of Farxiga was constant regardless of low or high ejection fraction.
Since patients still have a poor prognosis despite the wide range of heart failure medications available, it is crucial to start therapy right once rather than waiting for testing to estimate ejection fraction. This analysis demonstrates that there is no need to wait, according to Jhund.
Additionally, it addresses concerns raised by the Jardiance trial findings that patients at the higher end of the ejection fraction (EF) spectrum, with an EF of about 65% or higher, might not see the same benefit.
