The ALPHA Trial
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Does allopurinol reduce right ventricular mass in lung disease associated pulmonary hypertension?
IRAS ID
158724
Contact name
Allan Struthers
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Dundee
Eudract number
2014-002305-38
Research summary
People with COPD are at increased risk of heart complications. One of the biggest problems is that the muscle wall of the heart thickens.
The medical term for this is Right Ventricular Hypertrophy (RVH). RVH makes the heart less efficient and patients with RVH are at a greater risk of heart complications than those without it. The pressure in the blood vessel between this heart chamber and the lungs can also increase (called pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH). This can leave patients more breathless as the blood is not picking up oxygen well from the lungs.
It has previously been shown that a drug allopurinol, which is usually used to treat gout had the remarkable side effect of being able to reduce thickening of the left side of the heart wall in patients who had kidney disease or diabetes. The aim now is to see if patients with COPD and raised pressure in their right side of the heart may also benefit from treatment with allopurinol. If RVH can be reduced using allopurinol, this might be a new way to reduce cardiac risk in these patients and possibly improve their exercise ability and symptoms.
In this study the aim is to recruit patients who have COPD and who may have raised PAH. They will be screened for PAH by doing an ultrasound scan of the heart and then that will be confirmed with a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan, which is a special scan of the heart using an MRI machine to measure the extent of thickening of the heart muscle before they start on treatment of allopurinol or placebo.
As this is a clinical trial the participants will be randomly allocated to either allopurinol or a dummy medication (placebo) and will receive one year of treatment so that we can compare if there is a difference between normal treatment and addition of allopurinol. All the patients currently prescribed medication for their COPD will continue as normal on that. They will have a further MRI scan when their one year treatment with allopurinol or placebo finishes.
REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 2
REC reference
14/ES/1035
Date of REC Opinion
7 Aug 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion