TRIP

Aliskiren diabetes advice

MIMS News, 2012

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has recommended that the direct renin inhibitor, aliskiren (Rasilez), should not be prescribed in combination with angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors or angiotensin II antagonists in patients with diabetes.
The drug should be stopped in patients with diabetes who are taking an or and alternative antihypertensive treatment should be considered.
These recommendations follow the release of preliminary results from the ALTITUDE trial, which involved 8606 patients with type 2 diabetes at high risk of cardiovascular and renal events.
The four-year study was terminated early because aliskiren displayed a lack of efficacy in preliminary analyses and a high incidence of adverse events was observed including non-fatal stroke, renal complications, hyperkalaemia and hypotension.