Telmisartan does not improve six-minute walk distance in peripheral artery disease

For patients with lower-extremity peripheral artery disease (PAD), telmisartan does not improve six-minute walk distance compared with placebo at six-month follow-up, according to a study published in the Oct. 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Mary M. McDermott, M.D., from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues examined whether telmisartan improves six-minute walk distance compared with placebo in patients with lower-extremity PAD in a double-blind randomized trial. A total of 114 participants were enrolled and randomly assigned to six months of telmisartan plus exercise, telmisartan plus attention control, placebo plus exercise, or placebo plus attention control (30, 29, 28, and 27 participants, respectively). The primary comparison was changed to the two combined telmisartan groups versus the two combined placebo groups due to slower than anticipated enrollment.

The researchers observed no significant improvement in the six-minute walk distance with telmisartan versus placebo at six-month follow-up (within-group change, 1.32 versus 12.5 m; adjusted between-group difference, −16.8 m; 95 percent confidence interval, −35.9 to 2.2 m; P = 0.08). Telmisartan did not improve any of the five secondary outcomes compared with placebo. Hospitalization for PAD was the most common serious adverse event and occurred in 5.1 and 3.6 percent of patients in the telmisartan and placebo groups, respectively.

"These results do not support telmisartan for improving walking performance in patients with PAD," the authors write.

One author disclosed financial ties to the biopharmaceutical industry.

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