A new study reveals this common heart medication may harm women but not men
New research shows that a popular post-heart attack medicine may not have the desired effect.
Science, by definition, is always evolving in its understanding in order to get closer to the truth.
New findings, presented at the ESC Congress in Madrid and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that drugs known as beta-blockers, a popular post-heart attack drug, may contribute to a higher risk of hospitalisation and death in some women but not in men.
The trial, conducted across 109 hospitals in Spain and Italy and involving over 8,400 patients with preserved heart function (LVEF ≥ 40%), found no overall advantage in prescribing beta-blockers post-heart attack. “The total number of women in the clinical trial was the largest ever included in a study testing beta-blockers after myocardial infarction (heart attack), so this is a significant finding,” said Borja Ibáñez (via CNN), scientific director for Madrid’s National Center for Cardiovascular Investigation.
New findings “will reshape all international clinical guidelines”
Senior study author Dr. Valentin Fuster, who is president of Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital in New York City and general director of the National Center for Cardiovascular Investigation in Madrid, said that these findings “will reshape all international clinical guidelines on the use of beta-blockers in men and women and should spark a long-needed, sex-specific approach to treatment for cardiovascular disease."
The study found that women with heart damage after heart attacks who were treated with this type of drug were not only more likely to have another heart attack or even be hospitalised for heart failure — they were nearly three times more likely to die. None of the patients tested had a left ventricular ejection fraction below 40%, a sign of potential heart failure.
“This was especially true for women receiving high doses of beta-blockers,” said lead study author Ibáñez. “Yet at this time, some 80% of patients in the US, Europe and Asia are treated with beta-blockers because medical guidelines still recommend them,” he said. “While we often test new drugs, it’s much less common to rigorously question the continued need for older treatments.”
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Fuster echoed the conclusions from Ibáñez: “We found no benefit in using beta-blockers for men or women with preserved heart function after heart attack despite this being the standard of care for some 40 years.”
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