This is Bob Doughty with the VOA Special English Health Report.

Heart failure is a disease where the heart cannot pump enoughblood to the body. Fluid collects in the lungs. People who developheart failure are generally older. They feel tired and short ofbreath. Half the people die within five years.

Heart failure affects an estimated five million Americans. ButAfrican Americans are two and one-half times more likely to developit. Now, an experimental treatment appears to increase their chanceof survival.

Heart failure is usually treated with drugs called ACEinhibitors. But research has suggested that these drugs do not workas well in blacks as in whites. The difference may be linked tolower levels of nitric oxide in the blood of African Americans withheart failure. This chemical in the body helps blood flow.

So a company in Massachusetts, NitroMed, developed a treatmentcalled BiDil. This combines two existing medicines to increase theamount of nitric oxide in the blood. Earlier studies failed to proveits effectiveness. But those studies involved mostly white patients.Scientists later re-examined the results and saw signs that it didhelp black patients.

As a result, NitroMed began a study of more than one thousandblack people. They took traditional drugs for heart failure andeither BiDil or an inactive substance. The study found that thepatients who took BiDil had a forty-three percent better chance ofsurvival after one year. They also needed fewer hospital visits.

Doctor Anne Taylor, a professor at the University of Minnesota,reported on the study at a meeting of the American HeartAssociation. The findings appeared in The New England Journal ofMedicine.

NitroMed has been preparing to ask for federal approval of itstreatment. Such approval was rejected after the earlier studies.

Some people, though, are uneasy with the idea of what is known asa "race-based therapy." That is, a drug developed for just one groupwith a disease common in the general population. Yet some doctorsthink the new pill might help the larger population as well.

The heart association says heart failure can be caused bydisorders present at birth, or by a virus that damages the heartmuscle. But it says the same things linked to heart attacks can alsocause heart failure. These include smoking, being overweight, eatinghigh-fat foods and not getting exercise.

This VOA Special English Health Report was written by CynthiaKirk. This is Bob Doughty.