Study Finds Wegovy May Help Heart Failure Patients Cut Down on Medicines

MONDAY, May 13, 2024 (HealthDay News) — People with heart failure are often prescribed so-called loop diuretics, which help reduce the fluid buildup that is a hallmark of the disease.

Now research shows that taking the popular weight-loss drug Wegovy (semaglutide) may help patients reduce their need for diuretics.

After one year of Wegovy, “there was evidence of a significant reduction in mean loop diuretic dose, a lower likelihood of diuretic treatment intensification, and a greater likelihood of diuretic treatment reduction with semaglutide compared with placebo,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Kavita Sharma, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. in Baltimore.

His team described their findings Monday in Lisbon, Portugal, at the Heart Failure 2024 conference, a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.

The type of heart failure the Hopkins study focused on was “heart failure with preserved ejection fraction” (HFePF).

In this common form of the disease, “the heart functions normally but is too stiff to fill adequately, making the heart unable to meet the body’s need for oxygen-rich blood,” according to a press release from the meeting.

A total of 1145 patients with HFePF participated in the international study. Patients were obese (body mass index, BMI, equal to or greater than 30) and had a mean age of 70 years; Half were men and the other half were women.

At baseline, 220 patients received no diuretics, 223 received nonloop diuretics only, and 702 received loop diuretics.

All participants received either a “dummy” placebo injection or a Vegovi injection once a week for 52 weeks.

Patients taking Wegovy typically experienced significant weight loss during this time.

Compared to people who received a placebo injection, patients who did not take diuretics and received Wegovy lost an average of 8.8 percent of their body weight, while those who took the highest dose of loop diuretics experienced an average weight loss of 6.9 percent, Sharma said. the team said.

Taking Wegovy also appeared to be associated with improvements in other measures of heart failure, such as scores on a standard six-minute walk test.

Most importantly, patients who took Wegovy for a year saw an average 17 percent reduction in loop diuretic use, compared with an average 2.4 percent increase in diuretic use among those who took Wegovy for a year, the researchers reported. marked.

Finally, the study found that “across all diuretic subgroups, there were fewer serious adverse events with semaglutide compared with placebo,” according to a press release from the meeting.

Overall, “semaglutide improved symptoms, physical limitations, and resulted in greater weight loss across all categories of diuretic use in patients with HFpEF,” Sharma said.

When added to the reduction in diuretic requirements, the findings suggest “the disease-modifying effects of semaglutide… (which) are associated with improved long-term clinical outcomes in this patient population,” he said.

Because these results were presented at a medical meeting, they should be considered preliminary until they are published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

Learn more about heart failure treatment options from the American Heart Association.

SOURCE: Heart Failure 2024, press release, May 13, 2024.