A major clinical trial will test if injections of iron supplements could ease the symptoms of heart failure, it was announced today.
The trial is to be coordinated in Glasgow and will be backed by a £1.7 million grant from the British Heart Foundation.
The project was announced at the British Cardiovascular Society conference in Manchester, UK.
It will build on small studies that have shown that intravenous iron can give patients short term benefits, increasing patients’ capacity for exercise.
The trial will run over two years and will involve about 1,300 patients, testing the effects of iron on life expectancy and hospitalisation rates.
Dr Paul Kalra, an honorary senior lecturer at Glasgow University, said: “We have already made massive progress in treatments for heart failure, but despite this outcomes remain poor. People have a poor quality of life and a shorter life expectancy.
"If iron supplements prove beneficial, this British Heart Foundation-funded trial could improve life expectancy and quality of life in people living with heart failure.”
* A second report at the conference calls for women treated for breast cancer to get regular heart function monitoring.
A study at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, found that just 51% of patients under echocardiograms before beginning treatment – and just 38% had follow-up scans during treatment.
The study involved some 1,229 patients treated over a period of more than ten years.
Researcher Dr Jagdeep Singh said: “We’ve been seeing an increasing number of patients in the heart failure clinic following chemotherapy. This triggered our interest in finding out why and we wanted to see the scale of this problem. We were able to start doing this and evaluate treatment practices by accessing and analysing anonymous medical records.
“Improvements in chemotherapy mean we’ve been able to transform breast cancer from an often fatal condition into a very treatable disease.
"But, due to the real risk of heart failure, our findings show that doctors need to be more vigilant and institute protective heart treatments earlier.”
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