Monday, March 11, 2013 SAN FRANCISCO A commonly used erectile dysfunction drug, sildenafil, doesn't help patients who have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, a condition in which the heart's lower chambers are stiff and cannot relax and fill fully between beats. That is the finding of the RELAX study, presented today at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session and simultaneously published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The study's lead author called the results disappointing. VIDEO ALERT: Audio and video resources are available on the Mayo Clinic News Network. Sildenafil, a phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor, had shown encouraging results in smaller studies and in animal models. In this study, researchers looked at the drug's effect on maximum exercise ability as assessed by peak oxygen consumption and on how far people could walk in six minutes, their clinical status and their heart structure and function. They found no benefit, says lead author Margaret Redfield, M.D., heart failure specialist and researcher at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "It was surprising and a disappointment, and it was contradictory to our hypothesis," says Dr. Redfield. "There are few options for help for these patients, and we hoped we would find … Continue reading →

Public release date: 11-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Beth Casteel bcasteel@acc.org 240-328-4549 American College of Cardiology SAN FRANCISCO (March 11, 2013) Despite high expectations for a commonly used erectile dysfunction drug to treat patients with diastolic heart failure, no beneficial effects were found in a study presented today at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. The RELAX Study is the first multicenter trial to look at the effect of chronic therapy with sildenafil in diastolic heart failure. Sildenafil is a phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE-5) inhibitor, a class of drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction and certain types of pulmonary arterial hypertension. Positive results with sildenafil in smaller studies and animal models provided the impetus for the study. But, compared to the placebo, researchers found no beneficial effect of the drug on the primary endpoint of participants' maximum exercise capacity assessed by peak oxygen consumption nor on secondary endpoints of submaximal exercise capacity (as tested by how far patients could walk in six minutes), clinical status, or cardiovascular structure and function. "The results of our study were surprising and disappointing," said Margaret Redfield, MD, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the study's … Continue reading →