Effect of bradykinin receptor antagonism on ACE inhibitor-associated angioedema

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Bradykinin and Icatibant.

The researchers sought to test the hypothesis that a bradykinin B2 receptor antagonist would shorten time-to-resolution from ACE inhibitor-associated angioedema.

Why It Was Studied

The B2 receptor antagonist icatibant is approved for treatment of attacks of hereditary angioedema.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Patients with ACE inhibitor-associated angioedema (defined as swelling of lips, tongue, pharynx, or face during ACE inhibitor use and no swelling in the absence of ACE inhibitor use) were enrolled at Vanderbilt University Medical Center from October 2007 through September 2015 and at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2012.

C1 inhibitor deficiency and patients with bowel edema only were excluded.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Bradykinin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Bradykinin.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Bradykinin could be set against what happens without it.

Patients assessed severity of swelling using a visual analog scale serially following study drug administration or until discharge.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Angioedema, Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors, Bradykinin and Bradykinin B2 Receptor Antagonists.

The authors tagged it with the keywords icatibant and substance P.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Bradykinin and Icatibant.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Bradykinin compound page and the Icatibant compound page, all human trials.