New therapy boosts heart patients
Updated on 18 January 2008
Modifying the immune response of heart-failure patients could help to save lives, new research suggests.
Scientists tested the experimental approach on 2,426 patients with heart failure, which occurs when a weakened heart is unable to pump enough blood around the body.
More than 1,000 patients underwent immunomodulation therapy (IMT). The treatment involved removing blood and subjecting it to controlled levels of stressful chemicals before piping it back into the patients.
The effect of IMT is to alter the immune response by reducing cell-signalling mechanisms that lead to potentially damaging inflammation. At the same time, anti-inflammatory responses are enhanced.
The other patients were secretly given a non-active "dummy" treatment that resembled IMT. Both groups were treated for 22 weeks.
During a 10-month follow up period, there were 399 deaths and hospital admissions among patients from the IMT group and 499 from the placebo group - a risk reduction of 8% for the IMT patients.
However, IMT was more successful in two subgroups of patients, those with no history of heart attack and others with a specific form of heart failure called New York Heart Association (NYHA) II. These patients experienced a death and hospitalisation risk reduction of 26% and 39% respectively.
The researchers, led by Professor Guillermo Torre-Amione at The Methodist Hospital, Houston, Texas, US, reported their results in The Lancet medical journal.
They wrote: "Our findings suggest a role for non-specific immunomodulation as a potential treatment for a large segment of the heart failure population - including patients without a history of myocardial infarction (heart attack) and those with NYHA class II. However, this hypothesis needs to be tested in an adequately powered confirmatory trial."
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