The NIH called an early halt last month to one arm of an ongoing trial testing the ability of three drugs to postpone hypertension-related kidney failure in black persons after learning that one of the drugs is clearly less effective.
The trial, the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK), enrolled 1094 African Americans at 21 centers. One segment of the study compared the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor ramipril, the 
-blocker metoprolol, and the calcium channel blocker (CCB) amlodipine in patients with comparable blood pressures who already had a sign of early kidney damage—at least 1 g of protein in a 24-hour urine sample.
The investigators found that both the ACE inhibitor and the -blocker were significantly more effective than the CCB in slowing progression of kidney disease. The finding is important because CCBs are currently one of the most commonly prescribed drugs for hypertension . . . [Full Text of this Article]
