The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7501 p560
10 May 2008

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Everolimus stent shows promise

Use of everolimus — an experimental macrolide immunosuppressant — in drug-eluting stents, has been tested in a 1,002-patient trial, reported recently in JAMA (2008;299:1903).

Patients with coronary artery disease had either an everolimus-eluting stent or a paclitaxel-eluting stent implanted during percutaneous coronary intervention.

The everolimus stent, compared with the paclitaxel stent, resulted in less in-segment late loss (an angiographic measure of restenosis) at 240 days (P<=0.004), non-inferior rates of failure of the target vessel at nine months (P<=0.001) and fewer major cardiac events at nine months (P=0.03) and at 12 months (P=0.02).