OR WAIT null SECS
Bumetanide Nasal Spray and the Future of Edema With Josephine Harrington, MD, and Nihar Desai, MD
Harrington and Desai weigh in with their thoughts on the bumetanide approval and how we can continue to battle edema in heart failure.
On September 15, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved bumetanide nasal spray for the treatment of edema associated with congestive heart failure (HF), liver disease, and kidney disease. Under the name ENBUMYST, the spray is the first and only intranasal loop diuretic approved in the US offering a self-administered alternative between oral and intravenous diuretics.1
Loop diuretics are the standard first-line treatment for congestion, and are used to control patients’ volume status in HF. Most patients admitted to the hospital are given intravenous loop diuretics, regardless of perfusion status or other factors. However, blunted use of loop diuretics leads to blunted diuretic response in acute decompensated HF, which is related to functional and structural tubular remodeling. Bumetanide nasal spray was developed in part to circumvent the gastrointestinal absorption issues.2
In addition to revitalizing diuretic therapy for patients with HF, bumetanide has the capacity to overhaul key factors of the HF treatment landscape and open the way to address the unmet need of edema. HCPLive spoke with Josephine Harrington, MD, an advanced heart failure and transplant fellow at Duke University, and Nihar Desai, MD, MPH, an associate professor of medicine and vice chief of the section of cardiovascular medicine at Yale University, to discuss the implications of this groundbreaking approval.
“Too many of our patients become resistant, or traditional oral diuretics are ineffective, and so we need other ways to optimize their volume status,” Desai told HCPLive. “I was quite excited to see the data for the intranasal bumetanide, and I think that it does have a very important role to play for some of our patients.”
Harrington expressed her curiosity on how bumetanide will fit into the overall HF treatment cascade. She highlighted the lack of intranasal medications in cardiology prior to this approval, leaving many clinicians with limited experience prescribing similar drugs. She noted this as a potential gap in knowledge, possibly limiting the clinical uptake of bumetanide nasal spray.
“I think there are some opportunities to understand how this could fit into a patient’s armamentarium for symptom relief,” Harrington said. “But candidly, I think a lot of us need a lot more experience with this. Most of us don’t prescribe intranasal drugs as cardiologists regularly.”
Edema and fluid overload are still the leading causes of hospitalization for patients with congestive HF – recent estimates suggest 6.7 million Americans live with heart failure, and fluid overload directly causes >1 million hospitalizations annually. The bumetanide nasal spray is a step towards alleviating this unmet need and could potentially provide a path towards approval for future diuretic drugs to follow.1
“Getting back to the very fundamental aspects of heart failure management, diuretics have and always will play a very important role in that,” Desai told HCPLive. “Having some of these novel mechanisms and routes of administration offers a really important adjunctive part of our medical intervention for our patients.”
“Edema is a condition that bothers patients quite a great deal, and they’re always interested in ways to manage it that don’t affect their quality of life,” Harrington said. “I think having another arrow in your quiver to do that is always going to be a good thing. And exactly what the role is going to be compared to oral diuretics, I think still remains to be seen.”
References
Corstasis Therapeutics, Inc. Corstasis Therapeutics Announces FDA Approval of ENBUMYST (bumetanide nasal spray) for the Treatment of Edema Associated with Congestive Heart Failure, Liver Disease, and Kidney Disease. Business Wire. September 15, 2025. Accessed September 17, 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250915243998/en/Corstasis-Therapeutics-Announces-FDA-Approval-of-ENBUMYST-bumetanide-nasal-spray-for-the-Treatment-of-Edema-Associated-with-Congestive-Heart-Failure-Liver-Disease-and-Kidney-Disease
Biegus J, Ponikowska B, Canonico ME, Damman K, Palazzuoli A, Ambrosy AP. Bumetanide nasal spray: a novel approach to enhancing diuretic response and advancing ambulatory heart failure care?. Heart Fail Rev. 2025;30(5):1123-1126. doi:10.1007/s10741-025-10517-y
