Disappointing results for Novartis and Abbott heart drugs in the treatment of diabetes revealed at ACC meeting

There were some disappointments for two leading pharmaceutical companies yesterday, when data were presented at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting, held in Atlanta, which showed that potentially new strategies to prevent and treat diabetes and heart disease failed to improve therapy.

Diovan and Starlix fail in at-risk patients

Swiss drug major Novartis presented primary data from the NAVIGATOR trial (n=9306), in which its big-selling blood pressure drug Diovan (valsartan) or the oral diabetes agent Starlix (nateglinide) were assessed for their ability to delay the progression of type 2 diabetes or to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular events in people with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and cardiovascular disease or risk factors.

The results, published simultaneously in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that at five years valsartan achieved a statistically-significant 14% reduction in the risk of progression to diabetes compared to non-valsartan treatment (HR 0.86, 95% CI 0.080-0.92; p<0.001). however, valsartan did not show a statistically-significant reduction of the core (hr 0.94, 95% ci 0.82-1.09, p="0.22)" and extended (hr 0.93, 95% ci 0.83-1.03, p="0.08)" cardiovascular endpoints. nevertheless, nateglinide-based regimen did not show a statistically-significant reduction in terms of progression to diabetes or of cardiovascular events. />