The Consortium for Southeastern Hypertension Control (COSEHC), headquartered at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, is launching a major five-year study designed to update current guidelines for treating cardiovascular diseases, improve disease management and reduce heart attacks and strokes in the Southeast.
"This initiative sponsored by COSEHC will provide a unique glimpse of the characteristics of hypertensive disease, and its management, in the southeastern United States " which contains a diverse population with unusually high cardiovascular risk factors - and allow participating physicians to address the role of high blood pressure within the context of associated risk factors such as dyslipidemia, obesity, and type 2 diabetes," said Carlos M. Ferrario, M.D., COSEHC co-founder and current vice president of development. Ferrario is also the Director of the Hypertension and Vascular Research Center at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
"We greatly hope that the data gathered through our program might lead to new approaches to cardiovascular disease management and evaluation of such clinical outcomes as stroke, myocardial infarction and chronic renal failure," Ferrario said. The study was announced at COSEHC's 15th annual scientific meeting titled "Prevention in the 21st Century: The Future Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease" being held Sept. 24 - 27, 2008, in Baltimore, Md.
"COSEHC is updating the guidelines originally established by the well-known Framingham, Mass., heart studies, by including information on a more diverse American population located in the Southeastern United States. Data on ethnic minorities, women, and men will be analyzed for presenting cardiovascular risk factors, response to treatment interventions, and outcomes to identify what treatment approaches to reducing mortality and morbidity in this population work best," said Michael A. Moore, M.D., co-founder and current president of COSEHC.
"Daiichi Sankyo, Inc., a leader in cardiovascular care, provided support to COSEHC to help us create the tools we needed to analyze the data. Daiichi Sankyo has a strong focus on cardiovascular treatments and saw the potential for our work to improve future treatment paradigms. Together we established a global risk management database and assessment program that will allow us to independently analyze data through ICON, our partner Clinical Research Organization. Their support for our initiative will ultimately benefit the health and well-being of people suffering from cardiovascular disease," added Ferrario.
Cardiovascular disease has long been America's leading health issue - over 80 million people suffer from one or more forms of the disease. It is worse in some southeastern states where half the population can expect to die from this disease. Experts still face many unanswered questions concerning the best provision of comprehensive cardiovascular patient care that can be truly effective in warding off heart attacks and strokes.