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.

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

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.

“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.

The FDA has cleared two new drugs, tafamidis and tafamidis meglumine, for the treatment of cardiomyopathy caused by a rare disorder known as transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis (ATTR-CM).

Tafamidis, Pfizer’s treatment for transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM), has been granted a priority review designation from the FDA, potentially speeding its path to approval.

Cleveland Clinic researchers identified amyloid deposits in 10.2 percent of patients undergoing carpal tunnel release surgery, suggesting biopsies of hand tissue could be an early signal of life-threatening cardiac amyloidosis.

Research presented this week at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Munich suggests a new treatment may be emerging for transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy—a condition previously thought to be rare and untreatable.