Angina Drug Reduces Incidences of Heart Attack

Findings in patients with angina who participated in the Beautiful study, show that there is a 42 percent reduction in heart attack with Procoralan (ivabradine). This benefit was particularly marked in patients with a resting heart rate >= 70 beats per minute (bpm), where the drug cut the risk of hospitalisation for heart attack by nearly three quarters and the rate of coronary revascularisation by more than half.

These findings show that the drug is able to reduce major cardiovascular events in angina patients. "Procoralan is already known to relieve angina. These results demonstrated that it may also prevent cardiovascular events," said Professor Tendera, Medical University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland.

These efficacy results stem from a subgroup analysis of patients in the study with limiting angina. In this analysis, Procoralan reduced the primary endpoint - a combination of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction (MI) and heart failure - in all angina patients by 24 percent with an improvement on all parameters. Hospitalisations for fatal or non-fatal MI were also reduced by 42 percent. This benefit was even more striking in angina patients with a heart rate >= 70 bpm, where the risk of MI was cut by 73 percent. The need for coronary revascularisation was also reduced with Procoralan treatment, decreasing by 30 percent in all angina patients and 59 percent in those with a heart rate >= 70 bpm.

A total of 1,507 patients with angina were included in this subgroup analysis and half of them had a heart rate more than 70 bpm at baseline. Nearly all patients were receiving conventional treatment aimed at protecting against cardiovascular events, with approximately nine out of every 10 patients on beta-blockers.