Entresto Offers Hope to Heart Failure Patients

Novartis’ sacubitril/valsartan (Entresto) is showing promise for heart failure patients with reduced ejection fraction, regardless of background therapy or clinical stability.

Even clinically stable patients can be at risk for serious cardiovascular events. The PARADIGM-HF trial involved more than one-third of patients who were considered clinically stable, and around 20% of them experienced cardiovascular death or heart failure hospitalization. For 51% of this group, cardiovascular death was their first event.

"This new analysis shows that heart failure patients are never truly stable since in the majority of patients, their first clinical event was death,” said Vas Narasimhan, global head of drug development and chief medical officer for Novartis, in a press release. “We cannot afford to wait for patients to worsen to use Entresto and improve their chance at a better length of life.”

The study results showed that Entresto benefited clinically stable patients as much as it did the least-stable patients, who the researchers defined as those who had a heart failure hospitalization within 3 months of baseline.

The data from PARADIGM-HF also showed that Entresto led to a 20% or greater reduction in cardiovascular death or heart failure hospitalization compared with enalapril.

The benefits of Entresto were observed in patients taking higher and lower doses of beta-blockers, as well as those with or without an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator or a cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator.

Low blood pressure, kidney problems, and allergic reactions are potential adverse effects of Entresto.