Above a certain dose, ACE inhibitors appear to lower ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease risk

by Bruce Sylvester – Exposure to antihypertensive angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) appears to be related to a 57 percent reduced risk of developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS/a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in patients  prescribed ACEIs greater than 449.5 cumulative defined daily dose (cDDD) compared with patients who had not used ACEIs. The findings appeared online on November 10, 2014 in JAMA Neurology.

Feng-Cheng Lin, M.D., of the Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Taiwan, and colleagues used data from Taiwanese population database to make their analysis. They identified 729 subjects diagnosed with ALS between January 2002 and December 2008. They compared data from these subjects to 14,580 control group subjects without ALS. Approximately 15 percent of the ALS subjects reported ACEI use between two to five years before receiving the ALS diagnosis. About 18 percent of the control group reported ACEI use.

The investigators reported that, when compared with patients who did not use ACEIs, the risk reduction was 17 percent (adjusted odds ratio of 0.83) for the group prescribed ACEIs lower than 449.5 cDDD and 57 percent (adjusted odds ratio 0.43) for the group prescribed ACEIs greater than 449.5 cDDD.

“The findings in this total population-based case-control study revealed that long-term exposure to ACEIs was inversely associated with the risk for developing ALS. To our knowledge, the present study is the first to screen the association between ACEIs and ALS risk in a population-based study,” said the authors