2015 could be the lucky year for those who are suffering from heart medicine. It was the year that numerous drugs were discovered for the treatment of heart disease. In April of the same year, drug makers launched many new innovative heart medication that provide entirely new approaches to treating heart disease.
These medications are sending high hopes to the cardiology community because of the possibility of increased potency. To start with, there are just a few of them: two medications, Corlanor and Entresto[1], have been approved by the FDA for patients with heart failure.
What’s more, these heart medications are not mere enhancements to what’s out there already. They function differently from traditional medications that are recommended for patients with elevated cholesterol or heart disease.
Moreover, another drug for a certain type of heart attack was approved by the FDA around May 2020. Farxiga[2] (dapagliflozin) oral tablets were approved for adults with heart failure with decreased ejection fractions to mitigate the risks of hospitalization and death brought by cardiovascular heart failure.
Causes Of Heart Failures
Multiple risk factors play an important role in projecting whether or not you’re likely to develop heart disease. Two of these variables, age and inheritance, are beyond your influence. Moreover, there is also an increased concern regarding the risk of heart disease to women at the age of 55 and men at 45. When you have close family members who have a history of heart disease, the risk may be even greater.
There are other risk factors and they are as follows:
- Diabetes or insulin resistance
- Family history of heart disease
- High cholesterol and high blood pressure
- Clinical depression
- Obesity
- Smoking
- Unhealthy diet
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Excessive drinking
- Being in a high-stress environment
At a younger age, people with diabetes appear to have heart attacks. If they have insulin resistance or elevated blood glucose levels, they’re more likely to have multiple heart attacks.
The explanation for this is the glucose and blood vessel health relationship. The amount of plaque developing inside the walls of the blood vessels can be increased by uncontrollable blood glucose. This inhibits the flow of blood to the heart or slows it.
Depression leading to a variety of changes in the body can increase the risk of heart disease or heart attack. Your blood pressure may be elevated by too much tension, constantly feeling depressed, or both.
Furthermore, the levels of a substance called C-reactive protein (CRP)[3] are also increased by depression. A marker for inflammation in the body is CRP. In order to predict heart disease, higher than average CRP levels have also been seen.
Research For New heart medication
Heart attack occurs when blood pressure on the heart doesn’t meet the needs of the body. This form of heart failure occurs when the main pumping chamber of the heart, the left ventricle, is impaired. Farxiga is the first sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor in this unique heart medication to be approved for the treatment of adults with functional class II-IV heart failure with decreased ejection fraction of the New York Heart Association.
Types of heart medications
Corlanor is the first FDA-approved medication that can treat heart attack. Researchers split 6,500 patients into two classes in an international clinical trial. Corlanor was administered to one party while the other got a placebo. Study subjects in both groups continued to take the heart disease drugs they were already taking. The study compared the hospitalization risk and found that those taking Corlanor decreased their risk by 18% in addition to their normal care.
Entresto, on the other hand, was also referred to patients with heart failure with poor ejection fractions. It is in a different drug group than Corlanor and actually contains two drugs in one pill: valsartan and sacubitril. Sacubitril[4] is the first of a new class of medicines called inhibitors of neprilysin, which stop the degradation of peptides that lower blood pressure by an enzyme called neprilysin.
Each of these medications has shown promising results in clinical trials, not only manages the disease, but also minimizes repeat hospital admissions. This may mean major benefits for hospitals as they search for ways that help them escape financial sanctions that are currently imposed on those with unnecessary readmissions for some conditions, including heart failure, by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services[5].
In a clinical trial, Farxiga shows signs of survival and reduce hospitalization requirements in adults with decreased ejection fraction. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 4,744 participants, Farxiga’s protection and effectiveness were evaluated. The mean age of participants was 66 years and there were more male participants (77 percent) than female participants.
Investigators did research on the frequency of premature mortality, hospitalization for heart failure, and urgent heart failure visits to assess the efficacy of the drug. A once-daily dose of either 10 milligrams of Farxiga or a placebo (inactive treatment) was randomly allocated to the participants. People who received Farxiga had fewer coronary deaths. As a result, urgent heart failure visits after around 18 months than those getting placebo.
Dehydration, severe infections of the urinary tract and genital yeast infections may be caused by Farxiga. Elderly patients, patients with renal issues, or lower blood pressure, or with diuretics should check for the volume and function of their kidneys. It is also important to examine patients with signs and symptoms of metabolic acidosis or ketoacidosis. In people with diabetes taking Farxiga, severe cases of necrotizing fasciitis of the perineum (Fournier’s Gangrene) have been reported.
In terms of diet and exercise, Farxiga is also approved to enhance glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes. It can also minimize the risk of hospitalization for heart failure among adults with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease or other risk factors.
Cardiac Medications
The clinical trial VICTORIA (Vericiguat Global Study In Subjects With Heart Failure With Decreased Ejection Fraction)[6] investigated the impact of a drug called vericiguat on patients at high risk of death or hospitalization from heart attack.
The findings showed that the rates of cardiovascular death or hospitalization among vericiguat-treated patients were 18% lower than those in the placebo community. This was clinically important, because in 4.2% of patients who already received optimal heart medication, it’s an absolute decrease in negative health incidents.
A test called ejection fraction was the first major study to focus solely on the condition and explicitly assess people with a low proportion of blood being pumped out of their hearts. In this test, normal medication and a placebo drug were obtained by the other half.
Vericiguat was also shown to have few side effects and positive effects as early as three months into the study, in addition to reducing cardiovascular deaths and hospitalization in patients.
Vericiguat works by activating a soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) enzyme in the body, which is essential for improving the function of the heart and allowing blood vessels to relax in order to provide improved blood flow. Cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), necessary for the transmission of chemical signals to blood vessels resulting in vascular and coronary dysfunction, is decreased and unable to adequately stimulate sGC in patients with heart failure. Vericiguat is the first drug of its kind to be investigated for patients with worsening chronic heart failure as a once-daily oral therapy.
Heart Medication Side Effects
Many drugs have unwanted effects, but everyone responds differently, and side effects are not known to everyone. They could well experience strange symptoms or new emotions because people with heart disease take several different medications. A side effect of medication is obviously certain reactions such as intense sun-sensitivity, but other feelings such as confusion or memory loss can be part of experiencing heart failure. One or two people said that their drug did not have any side effects, and some agreed that it was difficult to say the difference between symptoms and side effects.
Multiple side effects of Heart medication have been showed
Diarrhea, rash, or scratching, stomach pain , headache, chest pain, muscle aches, and dizziness can be caused by antiplatelet drugs. Bleeding and necrosis (gangrene) of the skin are side effects of anticoagulants. Cough, elevated levels of blood potassium (hyperkalemia), low blood pressure, dizziness, headache, drowsiness, fatigue, abnormal taste, and rash are side effects of angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors.
Lightheadedness or dizziness, increased or abnormal heart rate, or headache can result from taking vasodilators. Constipation, nausea, headache, rash, edema, low blood pressure, drowsiness, and dizziness are among the side effects of calcium channel blockers. Dizziness, blurred vision, anorexia, abnormal taste, fatigue, nausea, and vomiting can be caused by anti-arrhythmics.
People we talked to mentioned a wide variety of side effects, some of which prompted them to stop taking a specific drug and pursue another one. Some of the side effects mentioned were due to the medications having their desired effect, but they were too powerful. After first beginning to take beta-blockers, dizziness and nausea were popular, but these feelings usually stopped as people are familiar to the medications. Some felt that beta blockers had slowed their hearts too much, making it impossible for them to do all their normal activities.
Conclusion
More studies are still on the run for the ongoing discoveries of drugs and treatments for heart ailment and it’s a milestone we also continue to perceive for the near future. More so, we continue to look at the previous studies[7] in order to guide us with the recent developments in the research field.
As of late, experts advised heart disease patients to follow protocols and prescriptions specially provided by their respective doctors due to the varying effects of these drugs.
Frequently Asked Questions
There’s a lot of choices available as treatments for congestive heart failure than ever before. Tight management over your medications and lifestyle, including careful monitoring, are the primary steps. Because the condition progresses, doctors specializing in the treatment of heart conditions can offer a lot of advanced treatment choices.
Overall, treatment for heart condition typically includes lifestyle modifications. These embrace consuming a low-fat and diet, having at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise on most days of the week, quitting smoking, and limiting alcohol intake.
Heart disease is known to have no cure, however, treatments can make it better. Almost every kind of heart condition or issue can be treated with modern medicines and technology. Several evidence indicates that normalizing high-pressure levels blood and lowering cholesterol to very low levels can partly reverse plaques within the coronary arteries.