The type 2 diabetes medication Farxiga (dapagliflozin) can prolong the life of those suffering from a common type that is heart-related failure as per an article that was published in JAMA Cardiology.
Although Farxiga was initially developed in order to help treat diabetes type 2, it was studied — and then approved to treat other health issues, too. In May of 2020 the drug was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use as treatment for heart failure that has a reduced ejection fraction, irrespective of whether someone is diabetic. In April 2021, Farxiga was accepted as a treatment for chronic kidney diseases, after clinical trials were cut short because they proved an “overwhelming” positive effect in this condition.
Benefits of Farxiga’s heart failure
Researchers have now demonstrated that, based on the results of the clinical trial of people who suffer from heart failure It’s likely that taking Farxiga can add years of life to those suffering from this disease — the result was calculated from data and not demonstrated, as the trial hasn’t lasted for long enough to demonstrate that the drug can add years of living. In this “exploratory study,” researchers looked at the data from a study that included 474 patients with heart failure, who were randomly assigned one of two drugs: Farxiga and a placebo (inactive pills). The participants were enrolled between February 2017 to August 2018 and followed up until June of 2019, with an average time in the range of 17.6 months.
For those who were given Farxiga in the course of this study, 10 mg the drug were consumed each day in addition to regular treatments for heart disease. The main outcome that researchers wanted to determine was the time between the moment that participants required hospitalization or an urgent-care appointment that required an intravenous (IV) treatments to treat their heart problems, or until they passed away from heart-related causes. Based on what previous studies have found about the link between hospitalization due to heart failure and death due to cardiovascular causes or other causes The researchers then utilized the Farxiga data to calculate how long people could be able to live if they were taking the medication for the rest of their lives.
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The study discovered that a person aged 65 who suffers from heart failure could be likely to live for an additional 6.2 years without experiencing a heart attack if they were to take a placebo as well as an extra 8.3 years when they used Farxiga. If they examined the causes of death and the time to die for a person 65 years old taking an placebo was calculated as 9.1 years, whereas for Farxiga the figure was 10.8 years, which is more than 1.7 year of living. Similar results were found when researchers calculated these outcomes for people who were different in age.
“These results suggest that the use of Farxiga can result in beneficial clinical outcomes in extrapolating events-free survival and overall,” the researchers wrote. “These results may prove useful in explaining the benefits of this therapy” to patients suffering from heart failure.