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ACE Inhibitors Cut Risk Of Death In Half For Those With Diabetes

Posted: Thursday, June 03, 2004

While blood pressure control is important in diabetes, there's also evidence that these drugs protect the kidneys from damage -- another serious complication that results from uncontrolled diabetes, he explains.

People with diabetes are at higher risk for heart disease and early death. But in his study of newly diagnosed people, he shows that these drugs can decrease the risk of death even in people without pre-existing heart disease.

Johnson's study is the first to investigate -- in a large population -- the heart-health benefits of these drugs in people with diabetes.

His finding: ACE inhibitors cut the risk of death in half, he reports. Also, the drugs reduced the risk of death from heart disease by 23%. "ACE inhibitors reduce [death] risk, whether there is heart disease or not," says Johnson.
In his study, Johnson and his colleagues analyzed nearly five years worth of medical records of people with newly diagnosed diabetes -- almost 1,200 "new users" of ACE inhibitors and almost 5,000 people with type 2 diabetics not taking ACE inhibitors. The volunteers were men and women whose average age was 61 years old.

During the five-year study, researchers found significantly fewer deaths in the people with type 2 diabetes on ACE inhibitors:

*** 9% of the ACE inhibitor group died, compared with 17% of those not taking the medication.
*** Of those deaths, only 3% in the ACE inhibitor group were related to heart disease, compared with 5% in the comparison group.
*** Previous research has demonstrated that ACE inhibitors improve cardiovascular and renal outcomes in a generalized cohort of patients with type 2 diabetes.
*** Recent data show that ACE inhibitors reduce all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in newly treated patients with type 2 diabetes.

Source: Diabetes In Control