MONDAY, Oct. 26, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Finerenone results in a lower risk for chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression in patients with CKD and type 2 diabetes, according to a study published online Oct. 23 in the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with Kidney Week, the annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology, held virtually from Oct. 22 to 25.
George L. Bakris, M.D., from the University of Chicago, and colleagues conducted a double-blind trial involving 5,734 patients with CKD and type 2 diabetes who were randomly assigned to receive either finerenone or placebo in a 1:1 ratio. All patients were treated with a renin-angiotensin system blockade that had been adjusted (before randomization) to the maximum dose that did not cause unacceptable side effects.
The researchers found that a primary outcome event (kidney failure, sustained decrease of at least 40 percent in the estimated glomerular filtration rate from baseline, or death from renal causes) occurred in 17.8 and 21.1 percent of patients in the finerenone and placebo groups, respectively (hazard ratio, 0.82) during a median follow-up of 2.6 years. A key secondary outcome event (death from cardiovascular causes, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or hospitalization for heart failure) occurred in 13.0 and 14.8 percent of the finerenone and placebo groups, respectively (hazard ratio, 0.86). The groups had a similar frequency of adverse events overall.
“These results suggest that in patients with CKD and type 2 diabetes, finerenone may be an effective treatment for kidney and cardiovascular protection,” the authors write. “The observed benefits of finerenone were clinically significant and were obtained on a background of guideline-directed therapy.”
The study was funded by Bayer, the manufacturer of finerenone.
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