Digoxin, a drug commonly used to treat heart conditions, was associated with a 72% higher rate of death among adults with newly diagnosed systolic heart failure, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that appears in an online issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
Digoxin is a drug derived from digitalis, a plant that has been used for more than 200 years to treat heart failure. “These findings suggest that the use of digoxin should be re-evaluated for the treatment of systolic heart failure in contemporary clinical practice,” said Alan S. Go, MD, senior author of the study and research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research.
