Farxiga, AstraZeneca’s lead diabetes drug, significantly reduced the risk of hospitalization and death in people with all types of heart failure, paving the way for a significant increase in eligible patients, according to clinical trial data.

The treatment belongs to a class of drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors, which were originally approved to treat type 2 diabetes, news.ro reported.

Since then, it has been proven that the drugs of this time benefit patients with chronic kidney and heart diseases and prevent heart attacks.

According to the company, Farxiga is the first heart failure drug to show benefits in reducing mortality in all forms of heart failure.

Detailed data from a study called DELIVER evaluating Farxiga in patients with a form of heart failure characterized by a slightly reduced or preserved ejection fraction were presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona.

Ejection fraction measures the heart’s ability to pump oxygenated blood around the body.

Farxiga met the study’s primary endpoint, producing a statistically significant 18% reduction in the risk of cardiac death, heart failure hospitalization, and heart failure emergency room visits.

Assuming regulators approve wider use of the heart failure drug, based on these data, the patient population for Farxiga will grow by 50 percent, said Ruud Dobber, who heads AstraZeneca’s biopharmaceutical division.

A rival drug, Jardiance, from Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim, had similar results last year in a study involving the same type of patients.

A combined analysis of DELIVER and another study involving about 11,000 patients with heart failure found that Farxiga reduced the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks, by 14% and death from any cause by 10%. The drug also reduced the risk of hospitalization due to heart failure by almost a third.

Heart failure occurs when the heart muscle becomes unable to pump blood as efficiently as it should, and can cause a number of serious health problems and death.

Of the approximately 64 million heart failure patients worldwide, approximately half have a reduced ejection fraction equal to or less than 40%. The rest have a slightly reduced or preserved emission fraction.

Regardless of low or high ejection fraction, Farxiga’s benefits were consistent, said Pardeep Jhund, a professor of cardiology at the University of Glasgow who worked on the analysis.

Despite the many available treatments for heart failure, patients still have a poor prognosis, so starting therapy rather than waiting for ejection fraction tests is important.

This analysis shows there is no need to wait, Jhund said.

It also addresses the question that patients with a higher ejection fraction (EF) spectrum—those with an EF of about 65% or more—would not get the same benefit, a concern that arose with the Jardiance study data.

Farxiga had sales of just over $3 billion last year. In 2022, sales of the drug were about $1 billion each quarter.

This analysis puts SGLT2 inhibitors at the forefront of heart failure treatment, said study co-author Scott Solomon, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Doctors will likely choose Farxiga or Jardiance based on availability and cost, which will likely outweigh any potential differences between the treatments, he said.