ACC 2018 Late Breaking Clinical Trial presentations have been announced.

One biggie is the ODYSSEY Outcomes: Cardiovascular Outcomes with Alirocumab After Acute Coronary Syndrome: Results of the ODYSSEY Outcomes Trial. This is the "other" PCSK9 antibody known as Alirocumab (Praluent). Recall, the FOURIER Cardiovascular Outcomes trial for the PCSK9 antibody Evolocumab (Repatha) released top-line results in Feb 2017 and full results at ACC 2017 in March 2017. We'll have to watch to see how Praluent compares to Repatha results.

There are also some other sub-studies being revealed in this late breaking ACC 2018 session for the cardiovascular outcome CANVAS, ACCELERATE, CANTOS and COMPASS studies that may be interesting.

In other cardiovascular outcomes trial news today, Amarin announced today that it has reached the 90% mark for the reported primary events in its REDUCE-IT study. REDUCE-IT is investigating whether reducing plasma triglycerides (TG) in patients with hypertriglyceridemia will reduce cardiovascular events. Icosapent ethyl (Vascepa), a highly purified ethyl ester of a long-chain omega-3 fatty acid called eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), that reduces plasma TG without raising LDL-cholesterol. 

Make me wonder is it normal for a company or clinical steering committee/data safety monitoring board to provide periodic updates on the number of reported primary events in a cardiovascular outcomes trial? It sure would be nice to know how many events BETonMACE has acheived so far.......