By Health and Science Africa
A new study has revealed that finerenone, a drug previously shown to benefit people with diabetic kidney disease, can also slow kidney function decline in patients without diabetes.
The international FIND-CKD trial was led by clinical pharmacologist Hiddo Lambers Heerspink of the University Medical Center Groningen and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a long-term condition where the kidneys are damaged and gradually lose their ability to filter waste, excess fluid, and toxins from the blood. Over time, this buildup of waste can cause a wide array of health complications.
The researchers enrolled 1,584 adults with chronic kidney disease who did not have diabetes. All participants had reduced kidney function and elevated protein levels in their urine, both indicators of ongoing kidney damage.
Participants received either finerenone or a placebo in addition to standard therapy with ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers, medications commonly used to protect kidney function and control blood pressure. Researchers followed the patients for an average of just over three years.
SciTechDaily reports that researchers evaluated changes in kidney function over time using the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), a measure of how effectively the kidneys filter blood.
It said patients treated with finerenone experienced a significantly slower decline in eGFR than those who received a placebo. According to Lambers Heerspink, the improvement was both statistically significant and clinically meaningful.
The treatment also lowered the risk of major kidney complications, hospitalization for heart failure, and death from cardiovascular disease.
A Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and a senior researcher at the Department of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), Lambers Heerspink said, “In the finerenone group, 13.9 percent experienced such a complication, compared to 16.9 percent in the placebo group. That amounts to a reduction in risk of approximately 23 percent.”
Finerenone users also saw notable reductions in urinary protein levels after six months of treatment.
Heerspink said, “The presence of protein in the urine is often an important and early sign of kidney damage. In the finerenone group, it decreased by an average of more than 41 percent, compared with about 9 percent in the placebo group. More than half of the patients who received finerenone achieved a reduction of at least 30 percent in the amount of protein in their urine. Such a reduction is an important indicator of a more favorable renal prognosis.”
The results are significant because previous large-scale studies of finerenone focused mainly on people with type 2 diabetes.
“Now it turns out the drug is also effective in people without diabetes, even though more than half of all CKD patients worldwide are non-diabetic. Chronic kidney disease now affects an estimated 800 million adults worldwide,’ Heerspink added.
The study also found that finerenone was safe for use in this patient population.
Heerspink said Finerenone could become an important new treatment option for people with chronic kidney disease who do not have diabetes, noting that the drug provides a clear delay in the decline of kidney function in addition to the current standard care.
He said, “The results provide physicians with new therapeutic options to help preserve kidney function and reduce cardiovascular and renal complications. And this applies to a broad, underserved patient population with non-diabetic CKD, for whom there are few treatment options in the guidelines.”