Heart failure trials on pharmacological therapy in 2015: lessons learned and future outlook

ABSTRACT

Much progress in the medical therapy of chronic heart failure (HF) has been made in the last decades. The last was the introduction of a new treatment strategy based on the combination of the neprilysin inhibitor sacubitril and the angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) valsartan into the pharmacological armamentarium, as reported in the PARADIGM-HF trial and its ancillary analyses. On the other hand, in the acute setting only scant progress in pharmacological treatments has been achieved, and most published data are based on observational studies or expert opinion. This review critically presents and discusses the most intriguing evidence from clinical trials in HF published in 2015. In particular, we focused on chronic HF with reduced ejection fraction and its comorbidities, while worsening HF or acute decompensated HF were more synthetically treated.

KEYWORDS:

• Heart failure
• clinical trials
• LCZ696
• serelaxin
• Pharmacological therapy

Financial & competing interests disclosure

R Latini and S Masson have received honoraria and institutional grants from Novartis. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. Editorial assistance for the preparation of this manuscript was provided by Luca Giacomelli, PhD, on behalf of Content Ed Net; this assistance was funded by Novartis.