Angina drugs show similar outcomes

The blood-thinning drug Lovenox works as well as a standard artery-clearing drug in patients with severe heart-related chest pain, but neither reduced the risk of death after a year of treatment, a study has found.

The research, paid for by Aventis Pharmaceuticals, a member of the Sanofi-Aventis Group that makes Lovenox, involved nearly 10,000 patients at 487 hospitals in 12 countries who suffered from acute coronary syndromes -- severe angina that cannot be treated with surgery or angioplasty.

They had undergone revascularization, a treatment in which small holes are laser-drilled in the heart tissue to improve blood flow.

In the study, which covered a year, the patients were treated with either enoxaparin, the generic name for Lovenox, or a form of heparin, the standard medicine used in many hospitals for artery-clearing.

After one year, the death rates in the two treatment groups were similar, said the report from the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, N.C. It was published in the Nov. 23/30 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.