The VICTORIA trial established that vericiguat, in comparison to placebo, significantly reduced the risk of heart failure hospitalization or cardiovascular death in patients with worsening heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). This study, published in ESC Heart Failure, assessed how vericiguat performed in a group of VICTORIA trial participants with baseline characteristics similar to those in the PARADIGM-HF and DAPA-HF trials.
The eligibility criteria from the PARADIGM-HF and DAPA-HF trials were applied to the 5,050 patients in the VICTORIA cohort to create simulated trial populations. This yielded 1,982 (39.2%) participants for the PARADIGM-HF subgroup and 2,543 (50.4%) for the DAPA-HF subgroup, following the removal of those with clinically established exclusions.
Compared to the overall VICTORIA trial, vericiguat demonstrated numerically greater reductions in heart failure hospitalization or cardiovascular death within the simulated PARADIGM-HF and DAPA-HF populations. Furthermore, vericiguat significantly reduced heart failure hospitalization in the DAPA-HF-eligible group, while only slightly reducing it in the PARADIGM-HF-eligible group. According to the researchers, these findings warrant further investigation into the effects of vericiguat in lower-risk heart failure populations, including the ongoing VICTOR trial.
This research was conducted on behalf of the VICTORIA Study Group: lead authors from DCRI include Veraprapas Kittipibul MD, and Robert J. Mentz, MD, and CVC co-authors include Justin Ezekowitz, MBBCH, MSc and Paul Armstrong, MD.
