Do ACEIs or ARBs reduce all-cause mortality, cardiovascular deaths, and major cardiovascular events in patients with diabetes mellitus?
In patients with diabetes mellitus, ACE inhibitors significantly reduce all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, whereas ARBs do not, suggesting ACE inhibitors should be preferred as first-line therapy to limit excess mortality.
IMPORTANCE: Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) may have different effects on cardiovascular (CV) events in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). OBJECTIVE: To conduct a meta-analysis to separately evaluate the effects of ACEIs and ARBs on all-cause mortality, CV deaths, and major CV events in patients with DM. DATA SOURCES Data sources included MEDLINE (1966-2012), EMBASE (1988-2012), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, conference proceedings, and article reference lists. STUDY SELECTION: We included randomized clinical trials reporting the effects of ACEI and ARB regimens for DM on all-cause mortality, CV deaths, and major CV events with an observation period of at least 12 months. Studies were excluded if they were crossover trials. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Dichotomous outcome data from individual trials were analyzed using the risk ratio (RR) measure and its 95% CI with random-effects models. We estimated the difference between the estimates of the subgroups according to tests for interaction. We performed meta-regression analyses to identify sources of heterogeneity. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Primary end points were all-cause mortality and death from CV causes. Secondary end points were the effects of ACEIs and ARBs on major CV events. RESULTS: Twenty-three of 35 identified trials compared ACEIs with placebo or active drugs (32,827 patients) and 13 compared ARBs with no therapy (controls) (23,867 patients). When compared with controls (placebo/active treatment), ACEIs significantly reduced the risk of all-cause mortality by 13% (RR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.78-0.98), CV deaths by 17% (0.83; 0.70-0.99), and major CV events by 14% (0.86; 0.77-0.95), including myocardial infarction by 21% (0.79; 0.65-0.95) and heart failure by 19% (0.81; 0.71-0.93). Treatment with ARBs did not significantly affect all-cause mortality (RR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.82-1.08), CV death rate (1.21; 0.81-1.80), and major CV events (0.94; 0.85-1.01) with the exception of heart failure (0.70; 0.59-0.82). Both ACEIs and ARBs were not associated with a decrease in the risk for stroke in patients with DM. Meta-regression analysis showed that the ACEI treatment effect on all-cause mortality and CV death did not vary significantly with the starting baseline blood pressure and proteinuria of the trial participants and the type of ACEI and DM. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors reduced all-cause mortality, CV mortality, and major CV events in patients with DM, whereas ARBs had no benefits on these outcomes. Thus, ACEIs should be considered as first-line therapy to limit excess mortality and morbidity in this population.
Cheng et al. (Mon,) studied this question.