PATIENTS WHO suffer from angina and who have difficulty taking standard drugs to treat their condition could have the risk of heart attack very significantly reduced if they were put on a relatively new heart rate-reducing medicine, a new study has found.
The study, presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona yesterday, looked at more than 1,500 patients with angina, many of whom were on existing treatments such as beta-blockers but whose heart rate was still over 70 beats per minute, which would be a significant predictor of their risk of having a heart attack.
It found that by giving them an Irish-made drug called ivabradine (Procoralan) in addition to their existing medications, their risk of heart attack was reduced by as much as 42 per cent. And for these patients, the incidence of heart surgery was cut by more than half.
Prof Kieran Daly, consultant cardiologist at University College Hospital Galway, said the findings of the study, which involved some of his patients, were noteworthy.
“We have seen patients benefiting from this,” he said. “It’s a very different drug type to what has been available. It works in a completely different way from beta-blockers or calcium channel blockers, so the fact that it is a completely different profile makes it very noteworthy and something we should pay attention to,” he added.
The latest findings come from a follow-up study to a larger one presented at the same congress this time last year.
The first part of the so-called “Beautiful” study of 11,000 patients in 33 countries found a person’s heart rate was a powerful predictor of their risk of having a heart attack.
It found those with a resting heart rate of more than 70 beats per minute had a 56 per cent increased risk of developing heart failure.
The researchers also reported that reducing a person’s heart rate with the drug ivabradine reduced the risk of hospitalisation with a heart attack by a third.
In the latest study, use of the drug in patients with a heart rate of 70 beats per minute or more was found to reduce their risk of hospitalisation as a result of a heart attack by 73 per cent.
Ivabradine, which is produced by the French pharmaceutical company Servier at its plant in Arklow, Co Wicklow, was licensed for use in Ireland in December 2005.
Prof Daly said that despite the fact that the drug had been available for some time, like any new medication it took time to work its way into the armament for treating angina, as initially it wasn’t known how well it would marry with the drugs that were already there.
Heart disease is Ireland’s number one killer. Approximately 10,000 Irish people die of cardiovascular disease every year and, of these, 5,000 die of heart attack.