Tag: CHAP

by Hannah Echols, UAB News, May 24, 2023

The Chronic Hypertension and Pregnancy trial, led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, received the David Sackett Trial of the Year award from the Society for Clinical Trials. The prestigious award is given to a clinical trial that improves the lot of humankind and provides substantial and beneficial change to health care.

The CHAP trial evaluated the effects of prescribing blood pressure medication to pregnant women with mild chronic hypertension. Results published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April 2022 showed treatment improved pregnancy outcomes without compromising the baby’s growth and overall health, which was a primary concern for physicians for years. CHAP results have since led to changes in national guidelines.

“Chronic hypertension causes serious and life-threatening complications for pregnant women and their babies,” said Alan Tita, M.D., Ph.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the UAB Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine, principal investigator for the CHAP trial, and lead author of the NEJM paper. “Between 70 percent and 80 percent of pregnant women with chronic hypertension fall into the ‘mild’ category, where there was not a medical consensus for treatment.”

The CHAP consortium — including over 60 collaborating clinical sites across the United States, with clinical and data coordinating centers in the UAB departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Center for Women’s Reproductive Health and the department of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health — launched the CHAP program in 2014 with funding from the National Institutes of Health’s Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. From September 2015 to March 2021, CHAP enrolled more than 2,400 pregnant women with mild chronic hypertension whose blood pressure was greater than 140/90 mmHg but less than 160/105 mmHg.

UAB, May 1, 2023

Congratulations to Alan Tita, whose CHAP study was selected as the top and most impactful study at TS23 Clinical Research Forum, and earning the prestigious Herbert Pardes Clinical Research Excellence Award! Tita’s work joins studies from IH, University of Chicago, MGH, Hopkins, Yale, UC Davis, and Cleveland Clinic selected as the top 10 studies this year.

UAB, CCTS, February 27, 2023

The research team led by Alan Tita, MD, PhD, will be honored with a 2023 Top Ten Clinical Research Achievement Award by the Clinical Research Forum (CR Forum) at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. on April 17, 2023. Dr. Tita is the senior vice chair for Research and Innovation in the UAB Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, associate dean for Global and Women’s Health at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, and director of the UAB Center for Women’s Reproductive Health. He is a CCTS Co-Investigator for Maternal/Fetal Medicine.

The Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards honor groundbreaking achievements in clinical research from across the nation. The competition seeks to identify major advances in the biomedical field resulting from the nation’s investment in health and welfare. The Top 10 award recipients are selected by a CR Forum panel from among clinical research studies published in peer-reviewed journals in 2022. They are based on the degree of innovation and novelty involved in the advancement of science; contribution to the understanding of human disease and/or physiology; and potential impact upon the diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of disease.

Tita is being honored for his leadership in the CHAP (Chronic Hypertension and Pregnancy) study, the most comprehensive trial of chronic hypertension in pregnancy ever undertaken. “The Chronic CHAP trial addressed a decades’ old question regarding not only the safety but benefits of treating chronic hypertension during pregnancy and led to immediate changes in national guidelines” said Tita. “This award recognizes the power of clinical research and collaboration that took literally more than a village. I am grateful to the CR Forum and to all the investigators, staff, healthcare workers and of course the patients that made this trial successful.”

“The Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards honor and celebrate the innovation, tireless efforts and profound contributions that clinical researchers and advocates have made on the health and wellness of humanity,” said Harry P. Selker, MD, MSPH, Chair of the CR Forum and Dean, Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Tufts University. “We congratulate the 2023 winners for their outstanding efforts.”