Interactive effectiveness of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers or their combination on survival of hemodialysis patients

Background: Does the use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers individually or as a combination confer a survival benefit in hemodialysis patients? The answer to this question is yet unclear. Methods: We performed a case-cohort study using data from the Mineral and Bone Disorder Outcomes Study for Japanese CKD stage 5D patients (MBD-5D), a 3-year multicenter prospective case-cohort study, including 8,229 hemodialysis patients registered from 86 facilities in Japan. All patients had secondary hyperparathyroidism, a condition defined as a parathyroid hormone level =180 pg/mL and/ or receiving Vitamin D receptor activators. We compared all-cause mortality rates between those receiving ACEI, ARB, and their combination and non-users with interaction testing. We used marginal structural Poisson regression (causal model) to estimate the causal effect and interaction adjusted for possible time-dependent confounding. Cardiovascular mortality was also evaluated. Results: Among 3,762 randomly sampled subcohort patients, those taking ACEI, ARB, and their combination at baseline accounted for 4.0, 31.6, and 3.8%, respectively. Over 3 years, 1,226 allcause and 462 cardiovascular deaths occurred. Compared to non-users, ARB-alone users had a lower all-cause mortality rate (adjusted incident rate ratio [aIRR] 0.62, 95% CI 0.50-0.76), whereas ACEI-alone users showed a statistically similar rate (aIRR 1.01, 95% CI 0.57-1.77). On the contrary, combination users had a greater mortality rate (aIRR 2.56, 95% CI 1.22-5.37), showing significant interaction (p = 0.03). Analysis for cardiovascular mortality showed similar results. Conclusion: Among hemodialysis patients with secondary hyperparathyroidism, unlike ACEI use, ARB use was associated with greater survival than non-use. Conversely, combination use was associated with greater mortality. Controlled trials are warranted to verify the causality factors of these associations.