New Heart Drug Could Save Millions

Experts at the World Congress of Cardiology are extremely optimistic about a proposed three-in-one pill for treating heart disease and believe it has the potential of saving millions of people worldwide. Targeted specifically at developing countries where heart disease rates are increasing dramatically, the so-called “poly-pill” is being developed in Spain.

The new heart drug will be a combination of the three best known medications for prevention of recurrent heart disease – aspirin, statins and ACE inhibitors. “Potentially, millions of lives could be saved worldwide by this,” said Dr. Sidney Smith, of the World Heart Federation. “These therapies are known to reduce mortality by up to 50% or more,” Dr. Smith said.

The poly-pill is expected to reduce future cardiac events like heart attacks and strokes which literally cripple patients. This initiative has the support of The World Heart Federation and the pill is expected to be ready in the next couple of years. The drug is likely to be first tested in Spain and will then be introduced in other markets across the world.

Heart diseases take toll of more than 17.5 million lives each year with almost 80% of all heart attacks taking place in low and middle-income countries. These countries currently have an urgent need for a cheap yet reliable solution for heart diseases. The new 3-in-1 poly-pill, according to The World Heart Federation, is expected to cost about a fifth of the cost of currently available therapies.

Having a single pill with multiple drugs would also make treatment easier for patients to follow. “People have issues with taking four or five drugs,” said Dr. Sania Nishtar, President of Heartfile. “They would much rather take just one.”

Public health authorities in developing countries foresee the multi-drug as a secondary prevention tool for use in patients with a known history of heart disease. These are the patients who need to take several pills together with some of those pills being continued for an indefinite period. Doctors might also find their life a lot easier as the drug would cut down on the chore of writing out long prescriptions.

But the new wonder drug does not have just supporters – there are a few experts who disagree as well. They feel the “one pill fits all” approach is not exactly perfect. “There are side effects from these drugs that make monitoring of patients essential,” said Dr. Freek Verheugt, Chairman of the Heart Center at the University Medical Center in Nejmegen, Holland.

Dr. Verheugt warns against the possibility of potentially serious side effects from the drugs that are to be part of the poly-pill. These side effects – gastric intestinal ulceration and bleeding – can play against the distribution of the drug on a mass scale. “Physicians need to monitor what they’re giving their patients, to make sure they tolerate it well,” Dr. Verheugt said. He feels distribution of the poly-pill would in now way reduce the burden on public health systems.

Dr. Smith and the supporters of the new drug however feel an additional public health tool for reducing cardiovascular disease rates makes the poly-pill worth pursuing. “The fewer hoops we have to jump through to get to medicines, the more cost effective they will be,” he said. “And the fewer medicines people need to take, the greater the possibility they will actually take them.”

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