Treating heart failure with LCZ696, a new drug from the Swiss laboratory Novartis would reduce the risk of mortality by 20%, according to the results of a study presented to the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, this trial also reveals a 21% reduction in the number of hospitalizations.
The benefits of treatment have been demonstrated
A phase III clinical trial carried out on 8,442 patients in 47 countries followed for 27 months proved the effectiveness of LCZ696 on heart failure.
THE’heart failure is defined by the inability of the myocardium (the heart muscle) to provide sufficient cardiac output to meet the body’s energy needs.
The results of this study showed that 21.8% of participants treated with LCZ696 died of heart failure and 26.5% of those treated with enalapril, which represents a difference of 20%. In addition, this new drug also reduces the number of hospitalizations for heart failure by 21%.
“A drug has to help patients feel better, change the course of the disease, and that’s exactly what the new LCZ696 treatment does,” says Milton Packer, professor at the University of South Texas at Dallas, the one of the main authors of the study. “And, if this drug causes hypotension in some patients, on the other hand it creates much less kidney problems.”
“Despite existing treatments, the death rate ofheart failure remains high, with up to 50% of patients dying within five years of diagnosis, ”recalls Novartis.
In view of the very satisfactory results of this clinical study, Novartis will file marketing authorization applications with the US drug agency, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), by the end of 2014 and with EMA, the European Medicines Agency in early 2015.
