Heart Pill Could Save Millions

A three-in-one pill being developed to treat heart disease could save millions, particularly in developing countries where most heart attacks occur, experts said Monday at the World Congress of Cardiology.

The so-called "polypill" would contain aspirin, statins and ACE inhibitors — the three drugs known to prevent recurrent heart disease — and be used to reduce the occurrence of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular health problems, the World Heart Federation said.

"Potentially, millions of lives could be saved worldwide by this," Dr. Sidney Smith, chairman of the federation's scientific advisory board, said at the conference in Barcelona, Spain. "These therapies are known to reduce mortality by up to 50 percent or more."

About 17.5 million people die of heart disease each year, with nearly 80 percent of heart attacks occurring in low- and middle-income countries.

The World Heart Federation, which is promoting the pill, said it could be ready within two years. It would first be tested in Spain, before being exported to markets, such as China, at one-fifth the cost of currently available therapies, it said.

"The fewer hoops we have to jump through to get to medicines, the more cost-effective they will be," Smith said on the sidelines of the Sept. 2-6 conference, which drew some 25,000 cardiologists, public health officials and representatives from pharmaceutical companies and non-governmental organizations.

The polypill would likely be used in patients with known histories of heart disease. Proponents say it would be far easier for them to take than multiple pills, possibly leading to more patients following their prescriptions.

"People have issues with taking four or five drugs," said Dr. Sania Nishtar, president of Heartfile, a non-governmental organization, based in Pakistan. "They would much rather take just one."

Making treatment easier for patients would also help doctors who now prescribe the three common heart medications.

"I issue prescriptions for these three drugs so often that I might as well have a stamp when writing prescriptions for some of my heart patients," said Dr. Gabriel Steg, a cardiologist at Bichat Hospital in Paris.

Some experts said, however, that using one pill as a fix-all approach was misguided and could lead to even more complications, as each of the drugs to be contained in the polypill has its own, potentially serious side effects.

"There are side effects from these drugs that make monitoring of patients essential," said Dr. Freek Verheugt, chairman of the Heartcenter at the University Medical Center in Nejmegen, the Netherlands.

"Physicians need to monitor what they're giving their patients to make sure that they tolerate it well," Verheugt said, adding that the polypill would not necessarily lessen the burden on the public health system.