For more than 200 years physicians have been trying to figure out how and when to use the heart drug digoxin. Although it has a narrow therapeutic window and potentially dangerous interactions with other drugs, it is endorsed by current guidelines and widely given to patients with heart failure (HF) and atrial fibrillation (AF). However, there have been no randomized trials in AF and only one trial, the famous DIG trial, in HF. In that trial digoxin had no impact on mortality but was found to help reduce the rate of hospitalization for HF.
Now researchers led by Stefan Hohnloser have performed a meta-analysis, published in the European Heart Journal, of 19 studies of digoxin, including more than 235,000 AF patients and 91,000 HF patients.
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Digoxin is derived from the foxglove plant (Digitalis lanata). (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
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