While losartan and atenolol lowered blood pressure to a similar degree, the LIFE study demonstrated that losartan delivered additional benefits to patients beyond reduction in blood pressure. As measured by yearly electrocardiograms, losartan significantly reduced the size of enlarged hearts compared to atenolol. The superior result with losartan is partially explained by reducing the size of the enlarged heart, but also could be attributed to other specific effects of losartan, a finding that needs to be investigated further.

The differences between losartan and atenolol in cardiovascular death were 204 and 234 in the losartan and atenolol groups respectively (p=0.206), and fatal and non-fatal heart attack occurred in 198 and 188, respectively (p=0.491). This was a notable result for losartan because beta-blockers such as atenolol have been shown to reduce rates of cardiovascular events (especially heart attacks) both in patients with hypertension and in patients with prior heart attack and other forms of cardiovascular disease.

In addition, losartan also provided patients with superior tolerability to atenolol in this study as evidenced by fewer side effects, helping patients to stay on their therapy with losartan.

The effect of losartan was consistent across all subgroups in the study. In the important diabetic subgroup, a group of patients known to be at increased risk for cardiovascular events, losartan again provided superior benefits to atenolol on combined cardiovascular disease and death, reducing this risk by 24 percent (p=0.031).

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