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The pulmonary hypertension drug ambrisentan (Letairis) was supposed to tackle one of the root causes of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis but actually worsened that disease, the ARTEMIS-IPF clinical trial showed.
In relatively mild IPF patients, ambrisentan appeared to accelerate disease progression compared with placebo (27% versus 17%, P=0.010), Ganesh Raghu, MD, of the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, and colleagues found.
The drug was also associated with double the respiratory hospitalizations before the trial was terminated early (13% versus 6% with placebo, P=0.007), the group reported in the May 7 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.