Another drug for diabetes found to also help fight patients with heart problems

A third diabetes drug has been found to help patients who also have heart problems.

People with diabetes often die of heart disease or heart failure. So new diabetes medicines are required to be tested in large studies to show they don’t raise heart risks.

One such medicine, Jardiance, surprised doctors a few years ago by lowering the risk of heart attacks and strokes. A second, Invokana, later showed similar benefits, though with some worrisome side effects.

Now, a new study tested a third drug, Farxiga, in more than 17,000 diabetics with other heart risk factors and found a lower rate of hospitalization for heart failure or death from heart-related causes — 5 percent among those on the drug versus 6 percent in a placebo group after four years of use.

That’s on top of the drug’s known benefits for controlling diabetes.

The results of the study were announced in Chicago at the recent American Heart Association national scientific conference, held at McCormick Place.

Certain infections and a serious buildup of acids in the blood were more common with Farxiga. But these were rare and are known complications of the drug.

The drug — which, like the others, might be familiar to many people because it’s heavily advertised on TV — costs about $15 a day, about the same as similar medicines.

Farxiga’s maker, AstraZeneca, sponsored the study, and many study leaders consult for the company.

An independent expert, Dr. Eric Peterson, who is a Duke University cardiologist and was one of the leaders of the heart conference, said doctors have been eager to know whether the earlier studies suggesting these drugs might help hearts were a fluke. Results from the new study, the largest so far, “could make this class of drugs much more standardly used” for diabetics with high heart risks or heart failure, Peterson said.

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