She will be NitroMed's clinical investigator. The trial will, for the first time, include a significant number of African-American women, she said. Participants will use either BiDil or a placebo with their current medications. The goal is to measure quality of life, reduced need for hospitalization, and improvement of heart function. The combination replaces depleted levels of nitric oxide in blacks far better than it does in whites - a distinction that may be based on genetics, Loberg said.
Nitric oxide is known to help the heart by relaxing blood vessels.
Developing the two drugs as a medical treatement has been the goal of Dr. Jay N. Cohn, a cardiologist and a professor at the University of Minnesota. In September 1999, he licensed BiDil to NitroMed. He said the two previous trials invovled 640 male volunteers, of which 30 percent were black - many of them recruited through Veterans Administration hospitals. For the total population, BiDil was found to be not very effective. However, a closer look showed it was significantly more effective among blacks than whites.