Background: The Candesartan Antihypertensive Survival Evaluation in Japan (CASE-J) trial compared the effects of candesartan and amlodipine on cardiovascular events in Japanese high-risk hypertensive patients. The present study aimed to clarify the effect of cardiac complications on cardiovascular events in patients enrolled in CASE-J.
Methods and results: Cardiac complications were defined as left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and ischemic heart disease (IHD). The primary endpoint was a composite of sudden death, cerebrovascular, cardiac, renal and vascular events. The study group was divided into 2,030 and 2,673 patients with and without cardiac complications. During 3.2 follow-up years, cardiovascular events occurred for a rate of 13.6 per 1000 patient-years in patients without cardiac complications, and 23.1 per 1000 patient-years in patients with cardiac complications (adjusted hazard ratio (HR): 2.22; P<0.001). Furthermore, LVH was associated with the onset of cerebrovascular events (adjusted HR: 2.38; P<0.001), whereas IHD was associated with the onset of cardiovascular death (adjusted HR: 2.22; P<0.05), especially sudden death and other cardiac events.
Conclusions: Cardiac complications are independent predictors for cardiovascular events in Japanese high-risk hypertensive patients. In particular, LVH is related to cerebrovascular events and IHD is related to cardiac death and other cardiac events.