Heart failure drug digoxin linked to premature death

Conclusion This is a valuable systematic review that has searched the global literature to investigate the link between digoxin use and death from any cause in people with atrial fibrillation or heart failure. Overall, it found that people taking the drug had increased risk of death from any cause. People who were taking the drug for atrial fibrillation had a slightly higher risk than those taking it for heart failure. These are important findings in terms of trying to quantify the size of the increased risk. However, there are points to consider: The researchers report how the individual studies had adjusted their results for potential confounders that could be influencing the results. However, the factors adjusted for are likely to have differed between studies, and we do not know how completely they will have taken into account all of the differences in characteristics between people who were and weren’t taking digoxin. This means it's still not clear how much of the increase in mortality risk is due directly to digoxin, and how much could be due to the health differences between the people studied. As the researchers also noted, the studies provided limited information on how mortality risk was associated with a particular therapeutic dose of digoxin, or with blood concentration levels. As such, it is difficult to know of a particular "toxic dose" when it comes to increased overall mortality risk. This study has also only focused on all-ca...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Medication Medical practice Source Type: news