Heart Disease News:

Gout Drug Helps Heart Failure Patients

Researchers have found that a safe and relatively cheap drug used to treat gout can also improve blood vessel function in heart failure patients.

As reported in the June 18th rapid access issue of Circulation, researchers believe the drug allopurinol may block the creation of harmful free radicals, which increase in heart failure patients and can damage blood vessels.

According to researchers, allopurinol reduces concentrations of excess uric acid that results in gout. Many heart failure patients have coincidental gout because the diuretic drugs used to treat heart failure produce gout as an unwanted side effect. Heart failure is also linked to oxidative stress, an increase in harmful free radicals that can damage blood vessels.

In the study, allopurinol or a placebo was given for one month to 11 patients with mild to moderate heart failure. Allopurinol decreased uric acid concentrations by nearly 60 percent in patients, while average forearm blood flow rose nearly 50 percent more than in patients taking the placebo.

Although uncertain whether allopurinol produced its benefit by way of decreasing superoxide anions or decreasing uric acid or both, the researchers said the drug, nevertheless, represents an alternate strategy for preventing the formation of free radicals that can lead to heart failure.

Despite the findings, co-author Dr. Allan D. Struthers told Medical Week that it may be premature for heart failure patients to demand allopurinol from their doctor.

"Although it is well tolerated, allopurinol can produce side effects especially a rash," said Struthers, a medical professor at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School in the United Kingdom. "More work is needed, but allopurinol does look promising as a future cheap way of improving things."

In an accompanying editorial, Drs. Ulf Landmesser, and Helmut Drexler, professors at Medical School Hannover in Germany, said the study, if its results can be replicated in a larger group of patients, "could pave the way to an inexpensive and possibly effective addition to the treatment of patients with chronic heart failure."

Source: Heart Disease Week of June 23, 2002