Influences of donepezil on cardiovascular system-possible therapeutic benefits for heart failure-donepezil cardiac test registry (docter) study
Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology, 06/29/2012
Clinical Article
Kubo T et al. – Donepezil seemed to be safe in patients with dementia without symptomatic heart disease and significantly decreased plasma brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels in patients with sub–clinical chronic heart failure.
Methods- Authors evaluated cardiovascular changes occurring during new initialized treatment with donepezil in 49 dementia patients over 6 months.
- No patient suffered from cardiovascular events.
- In clinical changes between baseline and the first evaluation after donepezil treatment, heart rate and plasma brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels as a marker for heart failure did not change (BNP 59.62 +/– 62.71 pg/ml at baseline to 53.18 +/– 42.34 pg/ml at first evaluation; p = 0.262).
- They further examined plasma BNP levels in two groups into which the patients were divided at baseline according to the cut–off plasma BNP level of 60 pg/ml.
- In patients with high level of BNP, the BNP levels decreased after administration of donepezil (116.39 +/– 76.58 pg/ml at baseline to 82.24 +/– 46.64 pg/ml at first evaluation; p = 0.011) with the tendency to be reduced in the follow up period.
- BNP did not change in patients with low level of BNP.
