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Heart Drugs Aid Peripheral Artery Disease Patients

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 March 2006, 15:10 CST

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Drugs used to treat heart disease, including statins to control cholesterol, aspirin to prevent blood clots, beta-blockers, and ACE inhibitors all prolong survival in patients with peripheral artery disease, investigators report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a form of atherosclerosis, a condition in which fatty build-up accumulates inside the arteries and obstructs blood flow. In PAD, blood flow in the legs and feet is impaired, which can cause lameness and pain. The condition also increases the risk of death and disability caused by heart attack and stroke.

Despite treatment guidelines that call for aggressive treatment of risk factors and modification in lifestyle to slow the progression of PAD, the effects of medications on reducing mortality have not been well-studied, note Dr. Harm H. H. Feringa of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues.

The team enrolled 2,420 patients with PAD to study the effects of cardiac medications and lifestyle factors on longevity. The average patient age was 64 years and 72 percent were men.

Four hundred thirty-six (18 percent) subjects were diabetic, 581 (24 percent) had high cholesterol, 837 (35 percent) were smokers, 1,162 (48 percent) had high blood pressure, 1,056 (44 percent) had coronary artery disease and 214 (9 percent) had heart failure.

During a follow-up period of around 8 years, 44 percent patients died. After accounting for risk factors, the researchers found that treatment with statin therapy reduced the risk of death by 54 percent; beta-blockers lowered the risk by 32 percent, aspirin by 28 percent and ACE inhibitors by 20 percent. Treatment with all of the drugs was significantly associated with higher rates of survival.

Feringa's team points out that the findings conflict with other studies showing that beta-blocker drugs can increase mortality risk in PAD patients.

They also note that adding walking or other exercise and risk factor modification, plus multidrug therapy, could decrease the mortality risk in patients with PAD even further.

SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, March 21, 2006.

Source: REUTERS

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