A common heart failure medication may help prevent heart damage related to chemotherapy (Sacubitril/Valsartan)

A commonly prescribed medication for heart failure was linked to a lower risk of heart damage, or cardiotoxicity, among high-risk cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment using anthracyclines, according to preliminary late-breaking science presented today.

Heart failure occurs when damage prevents the heart from pumping blood well enough to supply the body with blood and nutrients. Anthracyclines are a class of chemotherapy medications used to treat many types of cancer.

However, one of their potential side effects is cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body. Cardiomyopathy is a form of cardiotoxicity that refers to heart damage caused by cancer treatments involving chemotherapy.

The SARAH clinical trial examined the effects of the heart-failure medication sacubitril-valsartan.

Compared to a placebo, sacubitril/valsartan was associated with a 77% decrease in relative risk of further heart damage among people who already had signs of damage.

Participants began with a 24/26 mg dose of sacubitril/valsartan twice daily, which was titrated every two weeks until they reached a target dose of 97/103 mg twice daily, or the highest dose that patients were able to tolerate without side effects.

Compared to participants who received a placebo, those in the sacubitril/valsartan group were much less likely to develop additional heart damage by the end of the 24-week intervention period. Participants in the treatment group improved their GLS (global longitudinal strain), a marker of heart contractility, by an average of 2.55%, while participants in the placebo group experienced an average 6.65% decline in GLS.

The SARAH trial included 114 adults with cancer undergoing chemotherapy at Erasto Gaertner, a cancer hospital in Curitiba, Brazil. 80.7% were being treated for breast cancer; 16.7 for leukemia; 1.7% for sarcoma and 0.9% for leukemia.

Thanks for posting this. My youngest son, now aged 53, went through 6 months of chemotherapy in 2019 after having surgery for colon cancer. He was recently diagnosed with Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and has an appointment at the heart clinic at Rochester (New York) Regional Hospital on December 13th to be tested to see if he was born with this condition, or if it was caused by out-of-control blood pressure. After seeing this article, I'm now wondering if the chemo treatments could be the culprit. I just shared this article's info with him, and he told me that one of the chemo drugs they gave him was Oxaliplatin, which we just discovered can cause heart problems that can lead to death.

Since July, he's has two instances of congestive heart failure, and one a-fib episode. He was operated on November 2nd for a blockage caused by an internal hernia. They had to do a resection in order to get to the hernia to repair it. While in ICU and again after being moved to a regular room, he had three a-fib episodes. They finally got him stabilized, and he was discharged after almost two weeks. He saw his family doctor a couple of days later, and was put on Eliquis (blood thinner), Entresto, and Farxiga. On November 25, he ended up back in the hospital with internal bleeding caused by an ulceration in his small bowel. They repaired it via an endoscopy/bronchoscopy. This past Saturday afternoon, he had another a-fib episode so I took him to the ER. His heart rate was up to 144 while there. Before the doctor came in to see him, his a-fib had ended so they sent him home, with no change in his meds. He has an appointment on Monday to see his Cardiologist.

I’ve been taking Entresto for a little over a month now after my last hospitalization for Afib. I am still in rhythm and my BP is doing well. My heart rate went from the 40’s after the cardioversion to 60-70’s now and I’m feeling stronger. I’m also no longer on Metoprolol Tartrate or Losartin.

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