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ALLHAT Study
The Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial
(ALLHAT) was a practice-based clinical trial sponsored by the National Heart,
Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The trial was conducted in approximately 600
office-based practices and general medical and specialty clinics throughout the
U.S.A., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and in Canada.
A total of 42,418 patients were enrolled between February 23, 1994 and January
31, 1998. A vanguard phase was conducted in the first half of 1994; the
full-scale trial began in the fall of 1994 and continued for eight years, until
March 31, 2002. The last participant visit was March 31, 2002. The results of
the trial were released December 17, 2002.
The study had two components:
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An antihypertensive component, to determine whether newer antihypertensive
agents, such as ACE inhibitors, calcium blockers, and alpha blockers, reduce
incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) in high-risk hypertensives when
compared to diuretics.
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A lipid-lowering component, to determine whether reduction of serum cholesterol
with pravastatin, an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor, reduces total mortality in
moderately hypercholesterolemic older hypertensives.
Because the efficacy of lipid-lowering can be tested in a subset of patients
targeted for study in the antihypertensive component of ALLHAT, the two trials
were combined for approximately the cost of conducting either one alone.
Because African-Americans suffer disproportionately from hypertension and its
sequelae, a large percentage of participants were African-American.
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