Keeping Heart Failure from Worsening.

Individuals with heart failure are less likely to experience a worsening of their condition if they are treated with three drugs, including digoxin, an inexpensive medication in use for 200 years, suggests Kirkwood F. Adams, associate professor of medicine and radiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. He and colleagues argue that diuretics, ACE inhibitors, and digoxin should be used as soon as a patient is diagnosed as suffering from heart failure.

Adams, director of the university's heart failure program, says that digoxin has fallen out of favor among some doctors as a standard treatment for that condition because of concerns about toxicity. The combination of blood pressure agents known as diuretics (for reducing water retention) and ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitors, which dilate the blood vessels, are more widely advocated.

During controlled clinical trials, one investigation compared heart failure patients who were treated with both digoxin and diuretics to treatment with diuretics alone. The other compared patients who took...