After halting recruitment into its EMPHASIS-HF trial last May due to early beneficial results from an interim analysis, Pfizer has announced that compared to a placebo, its drug Inspra significantly reduces the risk of cardiovascular (CV) death or heart failure (HF) hospitalization in patients with chronic HF experiencing mild symptoms. For the randomized trial, 2,737 patients were followed for 21.2 months. Early results showed that 18.3 percent of the patients on Inspra died or were hospitalized for HF compared with 25.9 percent of patients given placebo.
“This drug significantly decreases heart failure hospitalizations and cardiovascular deaths. This is so important because heart failure is a very common and lethal condition, most often caused by chronic hypertension or coronary disease,” says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. “It is the most common killer of older people, so a drug like Inspra may be an important addition to the current therapy.”