Landmark trial shows benefits of ‘valsartan’

Internationally respected medical authorities reported at the American Heart Association meeting held recently in Orlando, Florida that valsartan, a drug for high blood pressure belonging to the angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) family, is as effective as the ACE-inhibitor captopril in reducing the risk of death and other non-fatal cardiovascular events (CV) among high-risk patients, as results of the VALIANT study show.

VALIANT (Valsartan in Acute Myocardial Infarction Trial), a randomized, double-blind, active-controlled trial, is the largest study to date of treatment after heart attack or myocardial infarction.

The study provides the first real evidence that valsartan can be used as a clinically effective alternative to ACE inhibitors in this population and give doctors a new therapeutic option, specially for patients who find ACE inhibitors difficult to tolerate, said lead researcher Dr. Marc Pfeffer of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The study was conducted to test the hypothesis that treatment with valsartan alone or in combination with captopril would result in better survival than treatment with the proven ACE-inhibitor regimen alone, but included pre-specified analyses to assess non-inferiority if the ARB was neither clearly better nor worse than captopril.

The adverse events seen in each single drug arm mirrored those known for each agent. The captopril patients experienced more cough, rash and taste disturbances.

"Valsartan is not only effective in the treatment of heart failure, and is approved for patients who cannot be maintained on an ACE inhibitor. It is also the only cardiovascular agent ever demonstrated in a head-to-head trial to have all the proven benefits of an ACE inhibitor, captopril, in patients following a heart attack," said Dr. Inder Anand, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota and director of the Heart Failure Program at the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.

Anand and Dr. Maqbool Jafary, director of the Novartis Medical Center for Asia-Pacific, will discuss with local physicians the results and clinical implications of VALIANT today, 6 p.m., at Le Pavillion on Roxas Boulevard in Manila.

Valsartan is marketed by Novartis Healthcare Phils.