New Antidiabetic Agents for the Treatment of Heart Failure in Hypertensive Patients

The development of newer glucose-lowering drugs for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in recent years, such as the SGLT-2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists/analogues with well-documented clinical benefits from large trials, has influenced international guidelines. These drugs are able to reduce both macro- and microvascular events in patients with type 2 diabetes and to prevent worsening of diabetic nephropathy. One important aspect of these new drugs is also the ability to prevent or treat heart failure (HF) through improved cardiac metabolism, but also by lowering of blood pressure and improvement of central hemodynamics. In this review, the evidence for such effects on HF is discussed for each drug class separately and in combination. In the future there may come new opportunities for fixed drug combinations (FDC) to improve cost-effectiveness and compliance of diabetes treatment when antihypertensive, lipid-lowering, and glucose-lowering drugs are combined. As control of hypertension is of great importance for HF prevention in patients with diabetes in general, the combination of traditional antihypertensive drugs (i.e., blockers of the renin-angiotensin system) with newer glucose-lowering drugs that may also lower blood pressure could prove to be a successful and a very useful combination. Thus, further studies are warranted.