Observed on RedHat 7.2 ia64 
* strace-4.3-2

strace -e does not work on ia64-7.1

[root@ia64-72 tmp]# strace -e brk cat /etc/passwd  2>&1 1>/dev/null |wc
      0       0       0
[root@ia64-72 tmp]# strace cat /etc/passwd  2>&1 1>/dev/null |grep '^brk'    
brk(0)                                  = 0x600000000000bac8
brk(0)                                  = 0x600000000000bac8
brk(0x600000000000bb08)                 = 0x600000000000bb08
brk(0x600000000000c000)                 = 0x600000000000c000
brk(0x6000000000010000)                 = 0x6000000000010000
brk(0x6000000000018000)                 = 0x6000000000018000

Tried with various binaries and various system calls. Also tried various forms
of the -e argument ( -ebrk  -e'trace=brk' ).

Some of the special -e options, like -efile and -eprocess, *do* work however.