RxTrials Institute Drug Pipeline Alert

Two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs, Micardis and Aggrenox, didn’t show significant advantages in preventing strokes in separate studies.

Patients who started taking Micardis (telmisartan) soon after an ischemic stroke and continued on it for two-and-a-half years did not have a significantly lower rate of recurrent stroke, major cardiovascular events or diabetes, according to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

The other study found that Aggrenox (aspirin/dipyridamole) worked no better than Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Plavix (clopidogrel bisulfate) in preventing recurrent stroke.

The studies drew on information from the same large multi-site study, Prevention Regimen For Effectively avoiding Second Strokes (PROFESS).

The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled PROFESS study enrolled 20,332 patients who had recently suffered an ischemic stroke. It was conducted as a collaborative effort between academia and Boehringer Ingelheim at 695 sites in 35 countries and included a four-year follow-up of patients.