The majority of Britain’s one million patients living with debilitating heart failure could be offered a controversial weight-loss jab from next month.
Pivotal trial findings were unveiled last night showing the drug, tirzepatide, cut the risk of death or worsening illness by more than a third – making it the first drug to have a significant impact on the most common form of the condition.
Experts immediately hailed it a ‘new cornerstone of treatment’, adding that the jabs had the potential to reduce the number of heart failure hospital admissions by tens of thousands – saving vital NHS cash and easing the agony of patients and their families.
Tirzepatide, sold under the brand name Mounjaro, is one of a new generation of weight-loss medications that have transformed the treatment of obesity and its related diseases.
In early trials, patients on it shed 20 per cent of their body weight, leading doctors to dub it the ‘King Kong’ of slimming drugs.
It has already received the backing of Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who last month announced a five-year £279 million deal with maker Eli Lilly to supply thousands of doses on the NHS.
Mr Streeting said he plans to offer the jabs to the jobless, to see if shedding pounds could improve their employment prospects.
The NHS spending watchdog approved tirzepatide in June for diabetics and is expected to give it the green light for weight loss next month – at which point cardiologists will be able to prescribe it to most heart-failure patients.
Tirzepatide is expected to be given the green light for weight loss next month – at which point cardiologists will be able to prescribe it to most heart-failure patients
Volunteers on the three-year trial had heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, or HFpEF, which is caused by obesity and accounts for up to 70 per cent of heart-failure cases.
Despite vast numbers of sufferers, until now there has been very little doctors could offer to improve patients’ odds, as drugs that work on other types of heart failure have little effect. Trial patients all lost weight but benefits were seen after just three months, leading experts to conclude the drug must have effects beyond aiding slimming.
‘What’s really impressive in this is the magnitude of the effect,’ said world-renowned heart-failure expert Dr Milton Packer, visiting professor at Imperial College, who led the study.
‘Other drugs to treat heart failure offer a 13 to 18 per cent reduction in risk of worsening illness,’ he said. ‘Tirzepatide offers a 38 per cent reduction – and I think it’s because it addresses the root cause of the disease.’
Heart failure is an incurable illness where the heart stops pumping as well as it should.
Symptoms include extreme breathlessness and life-ruining fatigue, and just half of patients live more than five years after their diagnosis.
It can be triggered by a heart attack, blocked arteries and genetics, but obesity is thought to be a significant driver in almost all cases. It is thought that pockets of fat accumulate around the internal organs, releasing inflammatory compounds that damage the heart.
In the trial, researchers found tirzepatide reduced levels of inflammatory proteins in the body – a sign, they said, it was having an effect beyond simple weight loss.
Numbers of heart-failure sufferers have surged in recent decades, with 200,000 new cases and 100,000 related emergency hospital admissions in the UK every year.
The findings come after tirzepatide was linked to the death of a British nurse earlier this month. It is thought to be the first fatality officially attributed to drug in the UK.
Now Ozempic could come as a patch
For one in ten users of the weight-loss drug Ozempic, the weekly jabs can be traumatic and painful.
Now scientists have developed a skin patch that does the job just as well but with none of the discomfort. And it only has to be changed once a month.
The patch, worn on the upper arm, is packed with hundreds of tiny ‘microneedles’ that puncture the skin, allowing the drug to seep into the body, but without going so deep that they hit nerves and trigger any pain.
The UK has the highest obesity rates in Europe. The emergence of Ozempic has raised hopes of reducing the health risks associated with obesity such as heart disease and cancer.
The patch has been developed by researchers at the University of Connecticut in the US.
Tests showed it delivered a steady flow of medicine that lasted at least a month.
Scientists now plan to run clinical trials on obese patients.