Effect of Dapagliflozin Administration on the Apoptosis Levels of Patients With Acute Myocardial Infarction

Overview

The currently known Sodium-Glucose Transporter 2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors are recognized not only for their effects on improving intravascular glucose levels but also for their cardioprotective effects, including improvements in endothelial dysfunction, inhibition of platelet activation, reduction in autophagy processes, oxidative stress, and inflammation, as well as inhibition of the Na+/H+ exchanger pathway, which potentially reduces cell damage and death resulting from ischemia and reperfusion processes. Research on the benefits of SGLT-2 inhibitors in pre-clinical studies with myocardial infarction has shown a significant reduction in myocardial apoptosis, indicated by reduced levels of caspase-3 and the apoptosis index. Additionally, there was an increase in ketone bodies and myocardial ATP, reduced levels of inflammatory cytokines, free radicals, and infarct area, as well as improvements in left ventricular ejection fraction. However, large-scale studies in humans have thus far been limited to investigating the effects of SGLT-2 inhibitors on mortality, rehospitalization rates due to heart failure, cardiometabolic factors, and improvements in remodeling parameters in myocardial infarction patients, with the use of empagliflozin or dapagliflozin. Based on literature reviews, there have been no studies to date that directly demonstrate the effects of dapagliflozin on apoptosis (caspase-3 levels) in myocardial infarction patients.

The study is a randomized controlled trial, single-center study in Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) patients held in Moewardi General Hospital, Central Java, Indonesia. The investigator divided 40 patients with AMI into two groups, the first is the Dapagliflozin group, which will get 10mg of Dapagliflozin once a day every morning and the second group will have a placebo once a day every morning also for 14 days. Each patient will be checked for Caspase-3 level from blood serum as primary outcome and Global Work (GW) echocardiographic parameters such as GWI, GCW, GWW, and GWE as secondary outcome at admission and 14 days after intervention. The study was approved by the hospital ethics committee. The clinical parameters above will then be analyzed. To determine the mean difference between unpaired groups (treatment and control), an independent T-test is used if the distribution is normal (if not, the Mann-Whitney test is used). Normality testing is performed using the Shapiro-Wilk test, considering the sample size is less than 50.