THURSDAY, Aug. 11, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- For patients discharged with acute heart failure (AHF), antigen carbohydrate 125-guided therapy (CA125-strategy) is associated with a significant reduction in the risk of one-year death or readmission for AHF, according to a study published online Aug. 10 in JACC: Heart Failure.
Julio Núñez, M.D., from the Universitat de Valencia in Spain, and colleagues conducted a multicenter randomized trial involving 380 patients discharged for AHF and high CA125. Patients were randomized to a CA125-strategy (187 patients) or standard of care (SOC; 193 patients), with the aim of CA125-strategy to reduce CA125 to ≤35 U/ml.
The researchers found that patients assigned to the CA125-strategy were more often visited and treated with ambulatory intravenous loop diuretics and statins; oral loop diuretic and aldosterone receptor blocker doses were more frequently modified. CA125 was associated with a significant reduction in the primary end point of one-year composite of death/AHF readmission, as a first event (P = 0.017) or as recurrent events (P = 0.008). A significant reduction in rehospitalizations, but not mortality, was the driver of the effect.
"CA125-strategy was superior to SOC in terms of reducing the risk of the composite of one-year death/AHF-readmission," the authors write. "This effect was mainly driven by significantly reducing the rate of rehospitalizations."
One author disclosed financial ties to Servier and Ferrer.