Stomach acid drug may slow heart failure

Treatment with famotidine, which is sold under the names Pepcid and Fluxid as a stomach acid blocker, appears to improve the symptoms occur with chronic heart failure, new research shows.

Famotidine blocks histamine receptors that exist on gastric cells, and this decreases stomach acid production. However, these receptors also exist in heart muscle cells, so Dr. Masafumi Kitakaze and colleagues thought famotidine could benefit people with heart failure.

To investigate, Kitakaze, at the National Cardiovascular Center in Suita, Japan, and colleagues compared cardiac symptoms and function in heart failure patients who were treated with famotidine or with a different type of acid blocker for reflux disease or gastritis.

As they report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the researchers found that famotidine therapy had a beneficial effect on the function of the main pumping chamber of the heart. Moreover, treatment with famotidine seemed to dramatically reduce hospital readmission rates for worsening heart failure.

In a statement, Dr. Gary S. Francis, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic and co-author of a related editorial, sounded a caution: "I certainly would not recommend that patients go out and start taking Pepcid three times a day or anything like that."

SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, October 3, 2006.