Telmisartan Lowers Blood Pressure, But Not Stroke Recurrence

The angiotensin-receptor blocker telmisartan failed to lower the rate of stroke recurrence when begun early after an ischemic stroke, the New England Journal of Medicine reports in a study released early online.

In an international study partly designed and conducted by drug-industry sponsors, PRoFESS Study Group investigators randomized some 20,000 patients either to daily telmisartan or placebo roughly 2 weeks after an ischemic stroke. (Patients also received an antiplatelet regimen as part of a larger study design.) After a mean follow-up of 30 months, recurrence rates did not differ significantly between the groups, although blood pressure was lower among those on telmisartan.

In Journal Watch Cardiology, Harlan Krumholz writes that "these results show yet again that improvement in a risk factor [blood pressure] may not translate into patient benefit." He concludes that it's unclear whether the results "are specific to telmisartan or might be found with all ARBs."