Wednesday November 12, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) --The blood pressure medication Avapro, marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Sanofi-Aventis, showed no better effectiveness than usual care in treating a type of heart failure that mostly affects women and the elderly, according to a new study.

The 4.5-year study did find a small advantage with Avapro: it was associated with reduced risk deaths from any cause and hospitalization for cardiovascular events including heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, unstable angina or arrhythmia compared with usual care. But the reduction was still insignificant statistically.

Researchers hoped that Avapro could better reduce the incidence of death and serious heart problems than drugs currently used in the study population.

"We were particularly disappointed because we still have large numbers of patients that still don't have a good treatment," Dr. Barry Massie coauthor of the study from the University of California, San Francisco was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Massie presented his study at the American Heart Association scientific meeting on Tuesday.

The study involved 4,128-patients with the type of heart failure in which the heart is in good shape and seemingly works normally, but the patients still experience symptoms like fluid retention, shortness of breath and swelling.

This type of heart failure affects 5.3 million Americans, but no specific therapy can be used to treat the condition, Massie said.  In most cases, patients were given drugs like blood pressure medicines and diuretics to treat symptoms like high blood pressure and fluid retention respectively.

Among the study subjects, a third was older than 75, 60 percent female and more than half had high blood pressure, the study showed.

Avapro also known as irbesartan is a member of a class of blood pressure medications called angiotensin II receptor blockers or ARBS.   The drug was used because the majority of the patients had high blood pressure.

Other types of blood pressure drugs have already failed to help patients with this type of heart failure. So the results of the study were not particularly surprising, the researchers said.

Heart failure can be caused by a wide range of factors including high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, valvular heart disease, diabetes, stroke, obesity and lifestyle risk factors such as smoking, physical inactivity and fatty food intake.