A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Double-Blind, Parallel Study of Various Doses of Losartan Potassium Compared With Enalapril Maleate in Patients With Essential Hypertension

Abstract The efficacy and safety of various doses of losartan potassium, a specific and selective angiotensin II receptor antagonist, were compared with those of placebo and enalapril maleate 20 mg in patients with mild to moderate essential hypertension in a randomized, double-blind, parallel study. We randomly allocated 576 patients at the end of a 4-week placebo baseline period to 8 weeks of once-daily double-blind treatment with losartan potassium 10, 25, 50, 100, or 150 mg, enalapril maleate 20 mg, or placebo. After 8 weeks of treatment, mean reductions from baseline in supine systolic/diastolic pressure 24 hours after dosing (trough) for losartan potassium 10, 25, 50, 100, and 150 mg, enalapril maleate 20 mg, and placebo were 7.6/7.9, 7.8/6.8, 13.0/10.1, 8.9/9.9, 10.5/9.7, 14.7/11.2, and 3.8/5.6 mm Hg, respectively. Compared with mean changes in supine diastolic pressure in the placebo group, losartan potassium 50 to 150 mg and enalapril maleate 20 mg produced clinically important and statistically significant reductions ( P ≤.01) in blood pressure. At 24 hours after dosing, the blood pressure changes obtained with losartan potassium 50 mg were essentially identical to those obtained with enalapril maleate 20 mg. While there was a dose-related effect with losartan potassium from 10 to 50 mg at peak (6 hours after dosing), doses of 10 and 25 mg were not consistently different from placebo 24 hours after dosing. To assess the once-daily effect of losartan potassium, trough-to-peak ratios of the mean changes in supine diastolic pressure after 8 weeks of treatment were calculated. These placebo-adjusted ratios (losartan potassium 10 mg, 78%; 25 mg, 23%; 50 mg, 60%; 100 mg, 72%; 150 mg, 49%) indicated that losartan potassium had sustained antihypertensive effects at 24 hours that were not the result of large peak effects; consequently, once-daily dosing is appropriate. In terms of safety and tolerability, there were no dose-related trends for losartan potassium with respect to the percentage of patients with any adverse experiences, serious adverse experiences, or drug-related adverse experiences or patients who withdrew because of an adverse experience. Headache was a common adverse experience for almost all the treatment groups. Dry cough was reported as an adverse experience in 8% of the enalapril maleate–treated patients compared with 3% in both the placebo- and losartan potassium 50 mg–treated groups.