According to the National Kidney Foundation, chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects 20 million Americans and another 20 million are at high risk for developing this progressive loss of kidney function. This disease can cause the kidneys to fail, forcing patients to receive life-saving dialysis (the process of artificially cleansing the blood) or a kidney transplant.

The American Heart Association reports that people with CKD, even those in the early stages of the disease, are in the highest-risk group for cardiovascular disease. Recent data show that the majority of CKD patients die of cardiovascular complications before they ever reach dialysis. The increased cardiovascular risk found in patients with CKD is related to several risk factors, including high blood pressure and anemia.

Anemia occurs when the amount of oxygen-carrying red blood cells decreases. This causes the heart to work harder to provide enough oxygen to the body. To date, there have been no clinical trials to determine whether anemia has an impact on cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks, stroke, heart failure and death in high-risk patients with CKD and Type II diabetes.

Now a group of researchers led by Dr. Marc Pfeffer, chief of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School, is investigating the potential connection between anemia, Type II diabetes and cardiovascular events. This study will examine the impact that treating anemia has on mortality and non-fatal cardiovascular events in patients with CKD and Type II diabetes. This clinical trial, called TREAT (Trial to Reduce Cardiovascular Events with Aranesp Therapy), will study more than 4,000 patients at 700 sites around the world.

“Physicians have long assumed that anemia is an important and treatable risk factor for cardiovascular disease in patients with CKD and Type II diabetes,” said Pfeffer. “The results of this trial should provide physicians with data that will, for the first time, definitively evaluate the impact that treating anemia has on patients living with chronic kidney disease and diabetes.”

For more information about TREAT, call (866) 57AMGEN or visit www.amgentrials.com.

This story provided by North American Precis Syndicate, Inc.