Jardiance: The First Drug Shown to Help People with All Types of Heart Failure
By Arvind Sommi
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Heart failure is one of the most common diabetes complications. New results from the EMPEROR-Preserved clinical trial show that Jardiance could be the first medication shown to help all people with heart failure.
People with type 2 diabetes are 2-4 times more likely to experience heart failure, one of the most common diabetes complications. Heart failure occurs when your heart is not able to pump enough blood to the rest of your body and can refer to either the right- or left-sided heart failure. Left-sided heart failure is more common and consists of both reduced and preserved ejection fraction:
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Heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) – HFrEF occurs when heart muscle becomes weaker and can only pump out less than 50% of the blood from the final chamber.
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Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) – HFpEF usually occurs when heart muscle becomes stiff, reducing the total amount of blood the heart can hold. However, the heart is still able to pump this reduced amount from the final chamber (called the left ventricle).
While some diabetes medications have been shown to reduce your risk of developing HFrEF, the EMPEROR-Preserved trial is the first trial that was successful in showing positive benefits for both types of left-sided heart failure. Other trials, such as the DELIVER trial (investigating the effects of Farxiga on HFpEF) are underway to see if other SGLT-2 inhibitors can also protect against this condition.
EMPEROR-Reduced and EMPEROR-Preserved spearately investigated the effect of the SGLT-2 inhibitor Jardiance (empagliflozin) on hospitalization and death due to both HFrEF and HFpEF respectively.
Results from the EMPEROR-Preserved trial, which included 5,988 participants with HFpEF both with and without type 2 diabetes, showed a reduced risk for hospitalization or cardiovascular death due to HFpEF. Specifically, Jardiance reduced the risk for hospitalization by 29%. Jardiance was also shown to reduce the total number of hospitalizations due to heart failure, and it extended the time to a person’s first hospitalization compared to the placebo.
Earlier in 2021, the EMPEROR-Reduced trial, which included 3,730 people, both with and without type 2 diabetes, showed that Jardiance reduced the risk of heart failure by 25% compared to those receiving a placebo. The trial also showed that Jardiance reduced the risk of first and recurrent hospitalization for heart failure by 30% compared to the placebo. Read our article SGLT-2 Inhibitor Jardiance Helps Those Living with Heart Failure to learn more.
If approved by the FDA for treating those with HFpEF, Jardiance would become the first clinically proven medication to help people with both types of left-sided heart failure. Results from this landmark study indicate that use of SGLT-2 inhibitors might soon be part of the guidelines for treating people with both types of heart failure (HFrEF and HFpEF).
To learn more about heart failure and how it could impact you, check out diaTribe’s two-part series on the topic:
- Heart Failure – The Overlooked Diabetes Complication, Part 1: What and Why?
- Heart Failure – The Overlooked Diabetes Complication, Part 2: Prevention and Management
