Mavacamten linked to cardiac biomarker improvements in HFpEF patients

Medical Xpress / JAMA Cardiology ^ | Oct. 10, 2024 | Justin Jackson / Sanjiv J. Shah et al

[ConservativeMind]

Mavacamten has shown signs of reducing heart stress in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) affects nearly half of all heart failure patients. It is characterized by the heart's inability to appropriately fill with blood.

Patients with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) of 60% or greater make up 43% to 46% of those with HFpEF. These individuals often show a reduced response to standard heart failure treatments.

Mavacamten is a cardiac myosin inhibitor already approved for treating hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and has demonstrated its ability to lower specific biomarkers in non-obstructive HCM cases.

The team reports that 26-week treatment with mavacamten was associated with statistically significant reductions in cardiac biomarkers that indicate heart stress and injury in patients with HFpEF and an LVEF of 60% or greater.

EMBARK-HFpEF is a Phase IIa, open-label, single-arm study conducted across 20 sites. Patients were treated with mavacamten for 26 weeks, starting with a daily dose of 2.5 mg, with an option to increase to 5 mg based on their heart function assessments at week 14.

The study revealed that mavacamten treatment was associated with significant reductions in cardiac biomarkers that indicate heart stress. Levels of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide decreased by an average of 26%.

High-sensitivity troponin T levels dropped by 13%, and high-sensitivity troponin I saw a 20% reduction. These changes suggest a decrease in cardiac wall stress and injury during treatment. Eight weeks after treatment ended, these biomarkers trended back toward baseline levels, indicating a potential direct effect of mavacamten.

Using the New York Heart Association classification, which measures the severity of heart failure symptoms, 41.7% of patients improved by at least one class by the end of the treatment period.

The safety profile of mavacamten was generally favorable.

[ConservativeMind]

Mavacamten helps these heart patients improve their heart failure symptoms by at least one class, for 42% of those treated.

[ConservativeMind]

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