Two Drugs for Heart Failure Show Mixed Results

Yancy said that his team thought that the drug might have a benefit for advanced heart failure patients who were not hospitalized. "We know that heart failure patients who are not hospitalized take their medicines, but can still be short of breath and still feel less than healthy," he said.

In the study, 911 patients with heart failure received nesiritide or placebo for six hours once or twice a week over 12 weeks.

Yancy's team found that the effects of the drug on all-cause death or being hospitalized for kidney or heart problems was practically the same for both groups, 36.8 percent for patients receiving placebo, compared with 36.7 percent of patients receiving nesiritide.

In addition, adverse events were also similar for both patient groups. Patients taking nesiritide were more likely to develop low blood pressure, but less likely to develop kidney problems, the researchers report.

"What we didn't expect in a carefully controlled study, where we took good care of all patients, was that patients not taking the drug, because of the quality care they were receiving, fared just as well," Yancy said. "What that means is we demonstrated no benefit of this drug for outpatients."

"But what we do demonstrate is that patients, even with advanced disease, can benefit from intensive care," Yancy said.

Fonarow noted that a large trial is looking at whether nesiritide benefits patients hospitalized with heart failure.

"This well-designed and executed randomized clinical trial of outpatient infusion of nesiritide for patients with advanced heart failure demonstrated that this treatment strategy did not result in incremental benefit for this challenging patient population," Fonarow said.

More information

For more on heart failure, visit the American Heart Association.