Potential New Treatment for Heart Failure

Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim recently announced the results of the EMPEROR-Preserved phase III trial, which “met its primary endpoint and demonstrated significant risk reduction with Jardiance (empagliflozin) for the composite of cardiovascular death or hospitalization for heart failure in adults with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.”

Jardiance was first approved by the FDA in 2016 to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death in adults with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease. Thus, Jardiance became the first type 2 diabetes treatment approved with this additional indication and the only oral type 2 diabetes medicine to show a life-saving cardiovascular benefit in a clinical trial. Jardiance is a sodium-glucose linked transporter type 2 (SGLT-2) inhibitor used to lower high blood glucose levels in those with type 2 diabetes.

Prior to this announcement, Augusto Muench, CEO of Boehringer Ingelheim Mexico, Central America and Caribbean shared with MBN that in 2020, its SGLT-2 inhibitor “showed potential to reduce deaths related to heart failure on patients with and without diabetes.” Merch was referring to the EMPEROR-Reduced trial, the first part of the phase III trial of Jardiance that investigated its safety and efficacy in 3,730 patients with chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

Globally, 60 million people that suffer from heart failure and Mexico has a death rate from heart failure of 5.14 per 100,000 inhabitants. According to Muench, Boehringer Ingelheim is pursuing “the medical indication and approval in Mexico because it is highly relevant for the local population.” The value of a treatment for heart failure circles around the survival rate of patients with this condition, which is of 50 percent since the progression of the disease can cause their death within five years of diagnosis. In Mexico, 40 percent of patients with heart failure have diabetes, 41 percent have high cholesterol, 57 percent have high triglycerides, 25 percent are obese, 55 percent have hypertension and 31 percent smoke, all of them aggravating factors for heath disease. Furthermore, less than 1 percent of those patients are physically active.

Heart failure is a complex clinical syndrome affecting the heart’s ability to pump blood around the body properly. Specifically, the ventricles (the heart's main pumping chambers) become stiff and do not fill adequately between beats. Heart failure usually manifests after obstruction of the coronary arteries, hypertension or cardiomyopathy, among other conditions. It can occur at any age but is most common in older people. Heart failure is a long-term condition that tends to get gradually worse over time.