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Tuesday, November 11, 2003The 14,000-patient Valiant study, presented at an annual meeting of the American Heart Association, showed that Novartis' drug Diovan was as effective as captopril, which is part of a class of drugs called ACE inhibitors. ACE inhibitors are often associated with serious side effects such as coughing, rashes and allergic swelling of the face, the lips and the breathing passage. Captopril is an older generic drug originally marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. under the name Capoten. "This trial provides evidence that this is a suitable alternative, a clinical alternative, and I do believe it will affect clinical practice," Dr. Raymond Gibbons of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told a news conference. Gibbons is chairman of the American Heart Association's annual Scientific Sessions and was not involved in the clinical trial. He may not have been involved in the trial, but he's continuing the pharmaceutical company boosterism that has become a tradition at the American Heart Association, which receives a good deal of money from the industry. The majority of people tolerate ACE inhibitors. Only about a third stop them due to side effects. Fortunately, this time the New England Journal of Medicine, and Reuters, is on the ball: Editorial writers for the New England Journal of Medicine, where the study is being published, were not as convinced as Gibbons and Novartis, which hailed the study. They said ACE inhibitors have a proven track record of reducing death and non-fatal heart attacks in more than 100,000 patients who have previously had a heart attack, compared with the relatively new data for ARBs. The editorial added that the cost of Diovan at the doses used in the study is about four to six times as high as the cost of using generic captopril at the doses used in this study. Because of those two factors, "ACE inhibitors remain the logical first-line therapy for high-risk patients" after heart attacks, the editorial said. However, it added that there is now an alternative strategy for those patients who can't tolerate ACE inhibitors. (The study can be read here, in its entirety, for free.) posted by Sydney on 11/11/2003 08:21:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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