Lilly and Daiichi present heart-attack study

US drug major Eli Lilly and Japan's Daiichi Sankyo presented the results of a new study showing that patients who suffered a non-fatal heart attack within the first three months of hospitalization for chest pain had a significantly-higher risk for dying or having another heart attack (in the following three months to four years) compared with subjects who did not experience a heart attack during the same initial period, at the annual meeting of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research, held in Athens, Greece.

In the 15,604-patient study, people who suffered a heart attack during the first three months after hospital admission for coronary artery disease compared with those who did not experience such an event during the same period were 62% (p<0.001) more likely to die and 84% (p<0.001) more likely to have an additional heart attack or death within four years. The increased rate among patients who had a heart attack remained similar even when the monitoring was extended from a three to six-month period. The researchers found that patients who suffered a heart attack within the six-month period were 61% (p<0.001) more likely to die, and 86% (p<0.001) were more likely to suffer a recurrent heart attack or death over a four-year period compared with those who did not experience a heart attack.