A new study has revealed that a drug recently approved to treat type 2 diabetes can also reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke. The new research revealed that treatment with sotagliflozin can significantly reduce the risk of adverse cardiovascular events in patients with type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease (CKD) and other cardiovascular risk factors.
In 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug to treat heart failure in certain high-risk patient populations. Sotagliflozin is developed by Texas-based Lexicon Pharmaceuticals and sold under the brand name Inpefa.
The findings of the study were published in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology recently.
While conducting the study, the researchers tracked data from more than 10,000 patients who presented with type 2 diabetes, CKD and additional cardiovascular risks.
“Patients were randomly assigned to either receive treatment with sotagliflozin or a placebo. Overall, after a median follow-up period of 14 months, sotagliflozin was associated with a 23% reduction in a patient’s risk of experiencing a major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE), including a myocardial infarction, stroke or cardiovascular death. There were also significant reductions in the individual risks of myocardial infarction and stroke,” the study stated.
“Physicians now have a new option to reduce global cardiovascular risk such as heart failure, progression of kidney disease, heart attack, and stroke in patients with either heart failure or type 2 diabetes, CKD and other cardiovascular risk factors,” study chair Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, MBA, director of Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital and the Dr. Valentin Fuster Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said in a statement. “This drug was approved to reduce the risk of deaths from cardiovascular causes, hospitalizations for heart failure, and urgent heart failure visits for patients with either heart failure or type 2 diabetes, CKD, and other cardiovascular risk factors. These important, new data show that it additionally reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes, and we could see more widespread use as a result.”
The study revealed that people in the sotagliflozin group had a 23 per cent reduction in the rate of heart attacks, strokes, and deaths from such cardiovascular causes compared with the placebo group.
“The new data show that it additionally reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes, and we could see more widespread use as a result,” Bhatt stated as quoted by The Telegraph.