BOSTON, April 15 (Reuters) - A high dose of Novartis's (NOVN.VX) blood pressure drug Diovan failed to prevent recurrences of atrial fibrillation, the common irregular beating of the heart that can increase the risk of stroke, Italian researchers reported on Wednesday.
"We did not detect even a modest trend in favor of valsartan therapy during the course of our trial," the research team, led by Dr. Aldo Paggioni of the ANMCO (Association of Italian Hospital Cardiologists) Research Center in Florence, wrote.
The results, detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine, may apply to other so-called renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system blockers, they said.
Novartis paid for the study of 1,442 people.
No matter what the researchers looked at -- how often atrial fibrillation reoccurred, how long it took to resurface, and how many people had more than one episode of atrial fibrillation during the one-year follow-up period -- the researchers found that the Diovan results were essentially the same as the numbers for the placebo recipients.
For example, it took, on average, 295 days for the heart to beat abnormally among the 722 Diovan patients and 271 days among the 720 placebo recipients.
Clotting events such as stroke occurred in 10 of the Diovan group, but in only two of the people getting a placebo. The researchers said that was probably due to chance.
The team did not look at whether such drugs can prevent atrial fibrillation in the first place.
(Reporting by Gene Emery; Editing by Maggie Fox)
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