NEW ORLEANS — A new medicine represents a dramatic advance for patients with a rare condition called pulmonary arterial hypertension — and a return to heart disease for Merck, which long had a legendary presence in cardiology.
The medicine, sotatercept, substantially increased the distance that patients could walk over the course of six minutes and reduced the risk that their condition would worsen, that they would die, and that they would need new treatments, according to data presented here at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.
“It’s a landmark trial,” said Bradley Maron, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who co-authored a recent scientific advisory from the American Heart Association on pulmonary hypertension. “There’s absolutely no question … that it advances a novel therapeutic class for a highly morbid and difficult to treat disease. This is a really important and favorable step forward for patients.”
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