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• Dansk

• 2008

  28 August 2008: Announcement no. 2, 2008: Zealand Pharma today announced that Dr. David H...

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• Product Pipeline

  Zealand's Pipeline comprises 1 compound in phase III, 2 compounds in phase II, 3 compounds ...

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Acute Heart Failure

Acute heart failure is a critical condition that is commonly seen in patients with chronic heart disease.  In contrast to myocardial infarction, for which a major symptom is pain, acute heart failure patients typically present with severe shortness of breath, among other symptoms.  During acute heart failure, the ability of the heart to pump blood from the lung circulation into the peripheral circulation is impaired.  The lungs become overfilled with fluid, which impairs oxygen uptake and leads to further deterioration of the pump function.  The vicious circle of this condition requires immediate removal of fluid from the lungs to normalize oxygen uptake.  At this stage of the heart disease, patients are normally in maximal treatment with multiple different drugs.  Despite being on maximal therapy with conventional diuretics, drugs that promote urine excretion and resulting loss of fluid, patients develop fluid overload in the lungs, severe shortness of breath and the sensation of suffocation and fear.  The condition may develop within a few hours or more gradually over days.  Even when patients are immediately admitted to hospital, the mortality is as high as 10-20% during the acute episode. 

Current treatment and unmet need
Currently patients with acute heart failure are treated with loop diuretics, potassium sparing diuretics, inotropics, ACE-inhibitors and other drugs that act as blood vessel dilators resulting in widening of blood vessels.  Despite intensive care, acute heart failure is still associated with high mortality rates of 20-30%.  A rare treatment of these patients is acute haemodialysis (filtering of the blood outside the body).  Hence there is a demand for new and safer drugs for the treatment of acute heart failure.