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Sodium nitrite before artery-opening procedures didn’t limit heart muscle damage


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American Heart Association Late-Breaking Clinical Trial Report LBCT 1/Abstract: 19595 (Hall E)

Study Highlights:

  • Giving heart attack patients sodium nitrate right before they underwent procedures to open blocked arteries didn’t significantly reduce heart muscle damage in a late-breaking clinical trial.
  • Patients with diabetes fared slightly, but not significantly, better when given sodium nitrite.


Embargoed until 3 p.m. CT/4 p.m. ET, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013
This release is featured in an embargoed media briefing at 10:30 a.m. CT, Sunday, Nov. 17.

DALLAS, Nov. 17, 2013 — Giving heart attack patients sodium nitrite just before performing a procedure to open blocked arteries doesn’t significantly reduce heart muscle damage, according to a late-breaking clinical trial presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2013.

Researchers investigated whether a five-minute sodium nitrite intravenous infusion before the procedure would protect heart muscle from reperfusion damage that may result from reopening the clogged artery.

Percutaneous coronary intervention — also called angioplasty — benefits patients with a blocked artery causing a heart attack. However, it causes some negative effects as well, accounting for a portion of the eventual damage to the heart, called reperfusion injury. Animal studies have shown sodium nitrate can significantly reduce the damage.

In the Nitrites In Acute Myocardial Infarction (NIAMI) Trial, researchers studied 229 first-time heart attack patients in three hospitals in the United Kingdom and one in Australia. Half of the patients were randomly assigned to get intravenous sodium nitrite immediately before angioplasty. The other half received plain saline.

Six to eight days after the procedure, researchers measured scar tissue in the patients’ hearts via cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. Patients given nitrite had no significant (0.7 percent) reduction in the damage from their heart attacks.

At six months, researchers found no benefit from a sodium nitrate infusion for patients.

“This study provides no evidence for benefit in the general population using this specific strategy,” said Nishat Siddiqi, M.B.B.Ch., first author of the study and a cardiology clinical research fellow at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. “Higher doses of sodium nitrite delivered over a longer period might have brought us different results, but at this dose it doesn’t work.”

Among diabetic patients in the study, however, nitrite reduced the heart attack damage by 4.3 percent, but the number of patients was very small and this finding wasn’t statistically significant.

Co-authors are Margaret Bruce, RN.; Christopher J. Neil, FRACP; Graeme MacLennan, M.Sc.; Seonaidh Cotton, Ph.D.; Sofia A. Papadopoulou; Baljit Jagpal; Sue Brown; Fatima Perez Gonzalez, M.D.; Satnam Singh; MRCP; Konstantin Schwarz, MRCP; Martin Feelisch, Ph.D.; Nicholas Bunce, MRCP; Pitt O. Lim, MRCP; David Hildick-Smith, MRCP; John Horowitz, FRACP; Melanie Madhani, Ph.D.; Nicholas Boon, FRCP; Dana Dawson, FRCP; Juan-Carlos Kaski FRCP and Michael P. Frenneaux, F.Med.Sci.; Disclosures.

The Medical Research Council of the U.K. funded the study.

Photo available on the right column of this link: http://newsroom.heart.org/news/sodium-nitrite-before-artery-opening-procedures-didnt-limit-heart-muscle-damage?preview=ca6f7b7083d7308dc42208acfacf4573

For more news from AHA Scientific Sessions 2013, follow @HeartNews #AHA13 on Twitter.

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Note: Actual presentation is 4 p.m.  CT/ 5 p.m. ET, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013, in Hall E.

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