Final results of the troubled NIH-sponsored TACT trial testing chelation therapy for coronary disease have now been published in JAMA. Last November, when the preliminary results were presented at the American Heart Association meeting, the positive finding in favor of chelation therapy surprised many observers, though the investigators and senior AHA representatives expressed considerable caution about the proper interpretation of the results. Full publication of the main results should now allow for a more thorough consideration of the trial.
The Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) was initially funded by the NIH more than a decade ago to test chelation therapy with EDTA, an alternative medicine therapy received by more than 100,000 people every year but with no evidence base for support. The highly controversial trial was temporarily suspended in 2008 in response to ethical concerns but was then allowed to resume. The trial was also hampered by slow enrollment, eventually resulting in a downsizing of the trial population. To maintain the trial’s power to achieve a meaningful result the follow-up time was increased. (Because of this change, and because the data and safety monitoring board reviewed the data multiple times over the course of the study, the threshold for statistical significance was lowered to 0.036.)
TACT was a double-blind study testing active or placebo infusions of chelation in 1,708 stable patients with a history of MI. The primary endpoint of the trial– the composite of death, MI, stroke, coronary revascularization, or hospitalization for angina– was significantly lowered in the chelation group:
- 26% in the chelation group versus 30% in the placebo group (HR 0.82, 0.69-0.99, p=0.035)
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Steve Nissen
The editorial by the JAMA editors is itself evidence of the extraordinary sensitivity of the TACT trial. The JAMA editors, in a highly unusual situation, discuss their detailed review of TACT and explain their decision to publish the trial. Although they acknowledge multiple limitations of the trial, they defend its value: “reports of rigorous investigations should not be censored because of preexisting ideological positions,” they write.
In his editorial, Steve Nissen agrees with the JAMA editors decision to publish the trial but issues a fierce indictment of the trial and its conduct. The TACT paper, Nissen writes, “represents a situation in which many important limitations in the design and execution of a clinical trial compromise the reliability of the study and render the results difficult to interpret. Unfortunately, the efforts of these investigators fell short of the minimum level of quality necessary to adequately answer the question they sought to investigate.”
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Daniel Mark
TACT investigator Daniel Mark provided CardioBrief with the following detailed response to Nissen’s criticism. (Nissen declined to respond to Mark.)
In his editorial, Dr. Nissen asserts that the “logical” explanation for the greater withdrawals in the placebo group is that patients were unblinded. He further implies that the CAM sites were more likely to be responsible for such unmasking.
His editorial is written from the perspective of someone who is absolutely sure that the trial results are wrong and his mission is to identify where the flaws originate.
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