The study is one of two reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine that look at race and responsiveness to medication. Texas researchers found that beta blockers, long thought by doctors not to work in black patients, actually have life-saving effects. In an editorial in the same issue, a deputy editor wrote that the idea of race playing a role in who fares better from one drug to the next is an emerging topic of controversy in medicine. Researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas said they hope their analysis helps end the disparity between who gets beta blockers and who does not. The beta blocker was the more important of the two drugs, he said, because it reduced the organ's pumping rate and output of blood, thus limiting the amount of work required of ailing hearts.
Heart failure is typified by the heart's inability to pump effectively.
He credited the beta blocker with slowing the progression of the disease by 54 percent in black patients and by 51 percent in non-blacks. Ever since beta blockers were introduced three decades ago, doctors have shied from prescribing them to blacks, after a group of small studies indicated beta blockers were ineffective for blacks. Beta blockers are used to treat hypertension, heart failure and in the aftermath of a heart attack. Yancy used the beta blocker carvedilol, made by GlaxoSmithKline. The company paid for the study, but Yancy said he believes any beta blocker would have the same effects.