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 LEXINGTON, Mass. (AP) - When a team of researchers zeroed in on studies that showed blacks responded better than whites to a heart medication, they spent another two years rechecking their work before releasing the findings.
"There was anxiety, I think, that probably made us wait a while until we were absolutely sure from our data that this was a real phenomenon, and not just a play of chance," recalled Dr. Jay Cohn, a University of Minnesota cardiologist involved in the study that was published in 1999.
But the study was clear: blacks responded better that whites to the drug that Cohn and his colleagues began investigating decades ago. That led to a 2001 clinical trial involving only black patients — and ultimately to last month's approval to market BiDil to blacks, the first medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration for a specific racial group.
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