Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors’ mechanisms of action in heart failure

Abstract

Three major cardiovascular outcome trials (CVOTs) with a new class of antidiabetic drugs - sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors (EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial with empagliflozin, CANVAS Program with canagliflozin, DECLARE-TIMI 58 with dapagliflozin) unexpectedly showed that cardiovascular outcomes could be improved possibly due to a reduction in heart failure risk, which seems to be the most sensitive outcome of SGLT2 inhibition. No other CVOT to date has shown any significant benefit on heart failure events. Even more impressive findings came recently from the DAPA-HF trial in patients with confirmed and well-treated heart failure: Dapagliflozin was shown to reduce heart failure risk for patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction regardless of diabetes status. Nevertheless, despite their possible wide clinical implications, there is much doubt about the mechanisms of action and a lot of questions to unravel, especially now when their benefits translated to non-diabetic patients, rising doubts about the validity of some current mechanistic assumptions.The time frame of their cardiovascular benefits excludes glucose-lowering and antiatherosclerotic-mediated effects and multiple other mechanisms, direct cardiac as well as systemic, are suggested to explain their early cardiorenal benefits. These are: Anti-inflammatory, antifibrotic, antioxidative, antiapoptotic properties, then renoprotective and hemodynamic effects, attenuation of glucotoxicity, reduction of uric acid levels and epicardial adipose tissue, modification of neurohumoral system and cardiac fuel energetics, sodium-hydrogen exchange inhibition. The most logic explanation seems that SGLT2 inhibitors timely target various mechanisms underpinning heart failure pathogenesis. All the proposed mechanisms of their action could interfere with evolution of heart failure and are discussed separately within the main text.

Keywords: Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors; Heart failure; Cardiovascular outcomes; Diabetes mellitus; Physiological mechanisms; Pleiotropic effects

Core tip: Three major cardiovascular outcome trials with a new class of antidiabetic drugs-sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors unexpectedly showed that cardiovascular outcomes could be improved due to a reduction in heart failure events. Moreover, recently dapagliflozin was shown to reduce heart failure risk for patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction regardless of diabetic status. Currently, there is much doubt regarding the mechanisms of action of these drugs. The most logic explanation is that they are timely targeting various mechanisms underpinning heart failure pathogenesis due to pleiotropic effects which are discussed in the main text.