Beta blockers used to improve left ventricular function may help treat pulmonary arterial hypertension which leads to heart failure.
Highlights
- Beta blockers such as carvedilol are the standard therapy for patients with left-sided heart failure.
- Successful treatment for right-sided heart failure and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) are lagging.
- Carvedilol is safe to use in PAH patients for six months with evidence of improved outcomes that could prevent right-sided heart failure.
Beta blockers - Standard Treatment For Heart failure
For nearly 40 years, targeting left ventricular dysfunction has been the foundation of left-sided heart failure therapy. Beta-adrenergic receptor blockade ("beta blockers") have been a cornerstone therapy for improving left ventricular function.
"There is a critical need for new therapies to support right ventricular function in pulmonary hypertension," said lead author Serpil C. Erzurum, M.D., Chair of Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute.
Beta blockers such as carvedilol are standard therapy in patients with left-sided heart failure. The Cleveland Clinic team assessed carvedilol use in a group of 30 patients with PAH in a double-blind, randomized study. "While treatments with beta blockers such as carvedilol are standard therapy in patients with left-sided heart failure, successful therapies in right-sided heart failure and PAH have lagged behind. Longer-term studies are needed but our initial analysis shows that carvedilol may also benefit patients with PAH, who currently have few available treatment options."
The participants received either placebo, low fixed-dose, or escalating doses of carvedilol over a six-month period. They found that the drug lowered heart rate in correlation with carvedilol dose, improved heart rate recovery from exercise, and did not worsen heart failure or lead to airflow deterioration.
"There is good reason to consider beta blockers for the right ventricular failure in PAH," said W. H. Wilson Tang, M.D., study co-author and advanced heart failure/transplant cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic.
The fact that beta blockers were well-tolerated and effective in lowering heart rates thereby improving the heart efficiency is unto itself a key observation, since doctors have been cautioned against using them in this setting for safety concerns. This study provides important new data that advances our knowledge of using this class of drugs in this chronic and life-threatening lung-associated vascular disease.
Reference
- Serpil C. Erzurum et al., Researchers find beta blockers have positive effect in pulmonary arterial hypertension, JCI Insight (2017).
Source-Medindia