For heart-failure patients, another trip to hospital can disrupt everything from work and family life to the simple routines most people take for granted. Preventing those admissions remains an important goal of treatment, reports ScienceDaily.
Dutch researchers are now reporting encouraging results involving a medicine that costs less than €0.10 per day. According to University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), the findings could eventually affect how some heart-failure patients are treated.
Looking beyond four
Current heart-failure care commonly involves four established types of medication. Cardiologists Dirk Jan van Veldhuisen, Kevin Damman and Peter van der Meer investigated whether low-dose digoxin could provide additional benefits alongside existing therapy.
Their Dutch trial recruited 1,000 patients across 43 treatment centres. Participants received either digoxin or a placebo in addition to their regular medication and were monitored for approximately three years.
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The trial found a 19% reduction in the combined outcome of cardiovascular death and worsening heart failure in the digoxin group. UMCG reported that this result, considered on its own, was not statistically significant.
A broader picture
The researchers then examined their findings together with data from two previous studies. That larger analysis produced one particularly notable result: heart-failure hospitalisations were about 25% lower among patients receiving low-dose digoxin.
The findings have appeared in scientific publications including Nature Medicine and JAMA, while results were also presented at the ESC Heart Failure Congress in Barcelona.
Another UMCG follow-up examined roughly 600 participants after the original trial. Patients who had been receiving digoxin experienced more problems during the first six weeks after stopping it than those who had received placebo.
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The researchers stressed that this observation alone cannot establish that digoxin works.
Price stands out
Digoxin is far from a new arrival in cardiology, but its extremely low cost distinguishes it from many newer treatments. UMCG says a low daily dose costs less than ten euro cents.
Dose is also central to the research. Rather than the higher amounts commonly prescribed in earlier decades, investigators studied lower doses intended to limit strain on a weakened heart.
UMCG researchers believe the accumulated evidence could eventually be considered when heart-failure treatment guidelines are updated. The research received €3 million from Hartstichting through its collaboration with ZonMw.
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This article is made and published by Mie Hermansen, who may have used AI in the preparation.