Viagra for heart failure?--RELAX and The American College of Cardiology meeting in San Francisco

In the surprising but true science for the day--Viagra for heart failure? The RELAX study (Evaluating the Effectiveness of Sildenafil at Improving Health Outcomes and Exercise Ability in People With Diastolic Heart Failure-The RELAX Study) looked at how sildenafil (Viagra,Revatio) helped people with a major cause of problems and death (morbidity and mortality) and heart failure. This important study will be released at the upcoming American College of Cardiology meeting in San Francisco this weekend.

The study details (sponsored by Duke University in collaboration with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and Pfizer) can be found at www.clinicaltrials.gov by entering the unique identifier NCT00763867. The study sought to improve exercise ability and health outcomes in people with diastolic heart failure, a pervasive problem which affects women and older people at a disproportionate rate. There are some 4 million US heart failure patients with roughly 500,000 added each year.

The study principal investigator was Kerry L. Lee, PhD at the Duke Clinical Research Institute and the study was chaired by Eugene Braunwald, MD of Harvard University. More to come as this editor follows reports from the ACC meeting starting on Saturday!

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