Promising news about heart failure

Novel drug improves breathing and appears to extend life.

It may be hard to imagine that a drug derived from a hormone associated with pregnancy could improve the symptoms of heart failure, but that's what serelaxin appears to do. In clinical trials of people hospitalized with new onset of sudden (acute) heart failure, the drug significantly improved shortness of breath (a condition doctors call dyspnea), one of the most frightening and persistent symptoms of the disease. It also reduced organ damage caused by poor blood flow and reduced deaths.