Telmisartan on Top of Antihypertensive Treatment Does Not Prevent Progression of Cerebral White Matter Lesions in the Prevention Regimen for Effectively Avoiding Second Strokes (PRoFESS) MRI Substudy
Clinical Trials Thursday, June 28th, 2012Stroke.ahajournals.org: June 26, 2012.
Background and Purpose—High blood pressure is one of the main risk factors for cerebral white matter lesions (WMLs). There is limited evidence from one randomized trial that blood pressure-lowering is able to slow WML progression. We investigated whether telmisartan prevents WML progression in the imaging substudy of the Prevention Regimen for Effectively Avoiding Second Strokes (PRoFESS) trial.
Methods—This predefined substudy comprised 771 patients (mean age, 65 years) with recent ischemic stroke of noncardioembolic origin who received telmisartan or placebo during a mean follow-up of 27.9 (SD, 7.6) months and had 2 evaluable MRI examinations after index stroke and at study closeout. All MRI scans were centrally adjudicated for progression of periventricular and subcortical WML by 2 neuroradiologists blinded to treatment allocation. Read More