Do RAAS inhibitors (ACE inhibitors and ARBs) reduce all-cause mortality in patients with hypertension?
In hypertensive patients, ACE inhibitors, but not ARBs, significantly reduce all-cause mortality, suggesting a class-specific mortality benefit.
AIMS: Renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) inhibitors are well established for the reduction in cardiovascular morbidity, but their impact on all-cause mortality in hypertensive patients is uncertain. Our objective was to analyse the effects of RAAS inhibitors as a class of drugs, as well as of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and AT1 receptor blockers (ARBs) separately, on all-cause mortality. METHODS AND RESULTS: We performed a pooled analysis of 20 cardiovascular morbidity-mortality trials. In each trial at least two-thirds of the patients had to be diagnosed with hypertension, according to the trial-specific definition, and randomized to treatment with an RAAS inhibitor or control treatment. The cohort included 158 998 patients (71 401 RAAS inhibitor; 87 597 control). The incidence of all-cause death was 20.9 and 23.3 per 1000 patient-years in patients randomized to RAAS inhibition and controls, respectively. Overall, RAAS inhibition was associated with a 5% reduction in all-cause mortality (HR: 0.95, 95% CI: 0.91-1.00, P= 0.032), and a 7% reduction in cardiovascular mortality (HR: 0.93, 95% CI: 0.88-0.99, P= 0.018). The observed treatment effect resulted entirely from the class of ACE inhibitors, which were associated with a significant 10% reduction in all-cause mortality (HR: 0.90, 95% CI: 0.84-0.97, P= 0.004), whereas no mortality reduction could be demonstrated with ARB treatment (HR: 0.99, 95% CI: 0.94-1.04, P= 0.683). This difference in treatment effect between ACE inhibitors and ARBs on all-cause mortality was statistically significant (P-value for heterogeneity 0.036). CONCLUSION: In patients with hypertension, treatment with an ACE inhibitor results in a significant further reduction in all-cause mortality. Because of the high prevalence of hypertension, the widespread use of ACE inhibitors may result in an important gain in lives saved.
“The guideline recommended goal of antihypertensive treatment is mortality reduction, however this is the first study that scientifically evaluates the value of RAAS inhibitors on mortality in their main indication of hypertension.”
Vark et al. (Tue,) studied this question.