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In a previous trial of patients undergoing surgery after myocardial infarction (MI), the experimental drug losmapimod resulted in non-significant improvements in several secondary outcomes, such as left ventricular function and incidence of recurrent heart attack.
Researchers carried out a phase III trial to explore whether losmapimod can improve cardiovascular outcomes in patients with acute MI. They randomly assigned 3,503 hospitalised patients to losmapimod or placebo for 12 weeks.
Reporting in JAMA (online, 4 April 2016)[1]
, the researchers found that patients treated with losmapimod were just as likely as placebo-treated patients to have a major cardiovascular event (8.1% vs 7.0%; hazard ratio 1.16; 95% confidence interval 0.91–1.47; P=0.24). Neither did the drug reduce the incidence of secondary outcomes, including mortality.
As a result of these findings, a proposed progression of the study involving the enrolment of 22,000 patients will not go ahead.
References
[1] O’Donoghue ML, Glaser R, Cavender MA et al. Effect of losmapimod on cardiovascular outcomes in patients hospitalized with acute myocardial infarction. JAMA 2016. doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.3609
