Heart Failure Patients With Normal Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction Don't Benefit From Treatment With Angiotensin II Recept...( Study highlights: -- The ang...),Health

Study highlights:

-- The angiotensin system inhibitor irbesartan did not improve outcomes in

heart failure patients with preserved left ventricular ejection

fraction.

-- There is not evidence-based therapy for this common condition that

predominantly affects women and older patients; more research into

mechanisms and potential therapies is critical.

NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An angiotensin II receptor blocker was no better than usual care for a type of heart failure that mostly affects women and the elderly, researchers reported at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2008. Irbesartan in Heart Failure with Preserved Systolic Function (I-PRESERVE) was presented as a late-breaking clinical trial. The study was simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The major finding most people associate with a failing heart is a reduced ability to pump blood, called a low ejection fraction, said Barry M. Massie, M.D., co-principal investigator of the study, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and chief of the cardiology division at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center. But patients can also have heart failure with good heart pumping ability, a situation referred to as "preserved ejection fraction heart failure."

The world's largest placebo-controlled trial of an angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) in this syndrome included 4,128 participants (average age was 72, 60 percent were women) who were randomized to receive either irbesartan, an ARB currently used to treat blood pressure, or usual care for preserved ejection fraction heart failure. Researchers then followed them for 4.5 years to assess clinical outcomes.

"Typically, the public and physicians think of heart failure as a large, poorly contracting heart that can't pump adequate blood to the rest of the body with an ej
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