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The heart failure drug sacubitril-valsartan significantly reduces rates of cardiovascular death and hospitalisation compared with enalapril, the current standard of care, in patients with reduced ejection fraction.
A new analysis, published in The
New England Journal of Medicine (online, 3 December 2015)[1]
, estimates that treatment with the drug is also associated with a one to two year increase in life expectancy compared with enalapril.
Researchers from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, re-analysed data on 8,399 patients from the PARADIGM-HF trial. They found a consistent effect on survival across patients aged 45–75 years. For example, a 65-year-old patient could expect to survive 11.4 years on sacubitril-valsartan compared with 10.0 years on enalapril.
The drug has been available since August 2015 on the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s early access to medicine scheme, and received its EU marketing authorisation in November 2015.
References
[1] Claggett B, Packer M, Solomon SD et al. Estimating the long-term treatment benefits of sacubitril–valsartan. New England Journal of Medicine 2015;373:23. doi:10.1056/NEJMc1509753
