In older patients with congestive heart failure or high blood pressure, treatment with a type of blood pressure lowering drug, called angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, appears to slow unintentional weight loss, researchers report in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.

The investigators note that weight loss is associated with higher mortality in patients with heart failure. As lead investigator Gina D. Schellenbaum told Reuters Health “in this observational study, the use of ACE inhibitors was associated with weight maintenance.”

Schellenbaum of the University of Washington, Seattle and colleagues examined data on a community-based group of almost 6,000 elderly patients.

The group included 2,834 individuals receiving treatment for high blood pressure and 342 with congestive heart failure. Sixty-seven percent of the patients with congestive heart failure also had high blood pressure and four percent of those with high blood pressure also had congestive heart failure.

The average weight loss amounted to 0.84 lbs. annually in the high blood pressure group and 1.4 lbs. in the congestive heart failure group.

After accounting for other possible contributing factors, ACE inhibitor use was associated with 0.38 lbs. less weight loss in the high blood pressure group and 0.64 lbs. less loss in the congestive heart failure group.

In light of these results, the researchers conclude that some of the benefits patients receive from ACE inhibitors “may be due to weight maintenance.” However, concluded Schellenbaum, “this finding needs to be verified in clinical trials - and there is at least one underway.”

SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, November 2005.