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Studies of Left Ventricular Dysfunction (SOLVD-BioLINCC)

Data Access NOTE:
Please refer to the "Authorized Access" section below for information about how access to the data from this accession. Access differs from many other dbGaP accessions.

Objectives
This study was initiated in 1986, primarily to evaluate the effects of enalapril, an ACE inhibitor, on long-term mortality and major morbidity in a group of participants with left ventricular dysfunction. Two large separate trials were run concurrently as part of SOLVD: 1) a prevention trial of participants with low ejection fraction but no overt symptoms of CHF and, 2) a treatment trial of participants with low ejection fraction and symptoms of CHF. In addition, participants at selected sites were entered into substudies to evaluate the effect of enalapril on a number of intermediate outcomes such as right and left ventricular function and hemodynamics, LV mass and wall stress, hormones, arrhythmias, exercise capacity, and quality of life in subsets of participants. Lastly, a registry of 6,336 participants with congestive heart failure of LV dysfunction was designed to describe the clinical course of an unselected group of participants.

Background
Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) is a major and increasingly recognized public health problem. The recognition that participants with CHF often have elevated peripheral vascular resistance has led to the introduction of vasodilator therapy, which has emerged as an important component of its treatment. Of the vasodilators, the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors appeared to be the most promising. In 1985, little was known about the impact of any long-term drug treatment on survival.

SOLVD Registry: The SOLVD Registry is a hospital-based observational study, conducted at selected SOLVD hospitals, of participants with at least moderate left-ventricular dysfunction (EF ≤ 45%) and/or radiologically confirmed heart failure. It consists of a main study (n=6,273) and a substudy (n=898). Although there is overlap between the Registry and the SOLVD trials, the Registry sample is not a subset of SOLVD nor is it the pool of participants eligible for both trials.

Participants
A total of 2,569 participants were enrolled into the treatment study and 4,228 participants were enrolled in the prevention study. The dataset available through the NHLBI contains the prevention and treatment study data as well as the registry data.

Conclusions
In the prevention trial, a significant reduction in the incidence of heart failure and the rate of related hospitalizations was observed for participants in the enalapril arm. A statistically significant reduction in mortality was not observed in the enalapril treatment arm; however, there was a trend toward fewer total deaths and deaths due to cardiovascular causes among the enalapril participants (SOLVD Investigators, et al., 1992, PMID: 1463530).