Cardiac Amyloidosis

With the first drug treatments for cardiac amyloidosis recently entering the market, there has been an explosion of interest to diagnose and care for these patients. It is considered a rare disease, but many experts now say it is actually just be under diagnosed. The disease is caused by protein misfolding. Normally soluble proteins in the bloodstream become insoluble and deposit abnormally in the tissues and organs throughout the body. There are three main kinds of amyloid that affect the heart, light chain amyloid (AL) and two types of transthyretin amyloid (ATTR or TTR). The first type of ATTR is hereditary, or familial amyloid, and the second is wild type, or age-related TTR amyloid. Nuclear imaging, echocardiography, CT and MRI all play roles in diagnosing amyloid and in determining the subtype, which is required for targeted treatment. 

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Amyloidosis patients can safely undergo TAVR

Researchers focused on 30-day outcomes, sharing their findings in the American Journal of Cardiology.

February 23, 2022
Patient doctor with masks. A team of specialists from Cleveland Clinic reviewed nearly 3,000 medications, writing that a common type 2 diabetes medication offered the most potential as an effective treatment for AFib. 

DOACs outperform VKAs among cardiac amyloidosis patients with HF, AFib

Outcomes from patients prescribed apixaban, rivaroxaban or dabigatran were compared with outcomes from patients given warfarin. 

December 2, 2021

Specialists share experience prescribing a historically expensive cardiovascular medication

Tafamidis received FDA approval in May 2019 for the treatment of transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM). It has a list price of $225,000 per year.

June 18, 2020
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Heart transplants provide value for patients with AL, ATTR cardiac amyloidosis

With the disease becoming more and more common in the United States, researchers have been hard at work determining the best possible treatment options.

May 26, 2020
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America’s most expensive CV drug needs a 93% price cut

A 92.6% reduction in the list price of tafamidis—an effective but ultimately unaffordable drug designed to treat transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy—would be required to make the medication accessible to the average heart patient, researchers reported in Circulation Feb. 12.

February 14, 2020

Cardiac amyloidosis increasingly common in US

New research suggests the incidence of cardiac amyloidosis in the U.S. is trending up, bringing with it high rates of morbidity and mortality.

September 20, 2019
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ASNC releases multisocietal amyloidosis imaging guidelines

The American Society of Nuclear Cardiology, together with eight other nuclear medicine and cardiology societies, have published a consensus document outlining the best practices for imaging and diagnosing cardiac amyloidosis.

September 16, 2019

ASNC publishes new amyloidosis imaging guidelines

“We anticipate that these expert multisocietal consensus recommendations on multimodality imaging in cardiac amyloidosis will standardize the diagnosis and improve the management of this highly morbid and underdiagnosed disease," wrote authors of the new guidelines published in the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology.

September 9, 2019
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