Late Anthracycline induced Cardiotoxicity- Childhood Cancer Survivors

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Early Detection of Late Anthracycline induced Cardiotoxicity in Survivors of Childhood Malignancy

• IRAS ID

  289855

• Contact name

  Chris Watson

• Contact email

  chris.watson@qub.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Queen's University Belfast

• Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

  N/A, N/A

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  Anthracyclines are drugs that can successfully treat numerous childhood cancers. Unfortunately, this drug can significantly weaken the heart muscle (cardiomyopathy).
  Cardiomyopathy can result in fluid collection in the lungs to cause breathing difficulties and an inability to do normal daily activities. Cardiomyopathy can cause poor blood flow to the organs leading to organ failure and premature death.

  Patients exposed to anthracyclines in childhood are particularly vulnerable to cardiomyopathy and this often leads to impaired quality of life and premature death at an excessively young age. They can develop cardiomyopathy at the time of treatment to 20 years after treatment. Standard care of high risk patients includes interval follow up with basic cardiac imaging (echocardiogram- a heart gel scan). Current data suggests that diagnosing cardiomyopathy when symptoms develop or current testing modalities are abnormal is too late for reversal of heart damage. Some small studies have proposed that early treatment with standard heart failure drugs can reverse the damage before it becomes permanent.

  The primary goal of this study is to find a reliable way of detecting cardiomyopathy as early as possible i.e. before irreversible damage occurs. We hope to detect early damage through currently available heart scans (echocardiograms and magnetic resonance imaging) combined with newer techniques (global longitudinal strain). We aim to assess participants with currently available blood tests for heart damage as well as newly developed blood tests (for example IL6 and sST2). Furthermore, we hope to discover novel blood tests by identifying blood markers (MicroRNA and protein markers) found only in affected patients. Imaging and blood tests will take place in the Belfast trust site over a 2 year period.

• REC name

  HSC REC A

• REC reference

  21/NI/0031

• Date of REC Opinion

  16 Mar 2021

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion