In the subgroup of participants with detectable canrenone concentrations, the relationship between the doses of spironolactone that the participants reported taking and canrenone concentrations was consistent in the two regions ( Fig. In an analysis of all the participants who reported taking the assigned doses of spironolactone, a significant correlation between the doses of spironolactone that the participants reported taking and canrenone concentrations was found among the participants from the United States and Canada, but not among the participants from Russia ( Fig.
Among the participants who were assigned to receive spironolactone and reported at the 12-month visit that they were taking the study drug (76 of 101 patients from the United States and Canada and 66 of 70 patients from Russia), canrenone concentrations were undetectable in a higher percentage of participants from Russia than from the United States and Canada (30% vs.
1A, and Table S2 in the Supplementary Appendix).
As was the case in the overall trial population, regional disparities in reported study drug use and dosing were observed ( Fig. The clinical characteristics of the repository participants were generally representative of the overall TOPCAT trial population, although there were some differences in baseline characteristics ( Table S1 in the Supplementary Appendix).
To further explore potential regional disparities in medication use, 3 we measured concentrations of canrenone (an active metabolite of spironolactone 4, 5) in 366 patients in the TOPCAT trial (206 patients from the United States and Canada and 160 patients from Russia) who provided consent to participate in the TOPCAT biorepository and had sufficient serum samples available from the 12-month study visit (see the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this letter at ). 1 However, significant differences in the clinical profiles, event rates, and responses to spironolactone were identified between the patients who were enrolled in the trial in the Americas (United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina) and the patients who were enrolled in Russia and Georgia, and these differences have aroused concerns about study conduct at the Russian and Georgian sites. The investigators found that the incidence of the primary composite end point of death from cardiovascular causes, hospitalization for heart failure, or resuscitated cardiac arrest was not significantly lower in the spironolactone group than in the placebo group, but the incidence of hospitalization for heart failure was significantly lower in the spironolactone group. Its underlying table processing facilities are provided by STIL.In the Treatment of Preserved Cardiac Function Heart Failure with an Aldosterone Antagonist (TOPCAT) trial, patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction were randomly assigned to receive either spironolactone or placebo. It has been developed in the UK within the Starlink and AstroGrid projects, and under PPARC and STFC grants. The program is written in pure Java and available under the GNU General Public Licence. Between 20 TOPCAT was developed within the AstroGrid project, and is offered as part of a standard suite of applications on the AstroGrid web site, where you can find information on several other VO tools. However, because it uses Virtual Observatory (VO) standards, it can cooperate smoothly with other tools in the VO world and beyond, such as VODesktop, Aladin and ds9. It is a stand-alone application which works quite happily with no network connection. Table data and metadata can be edited and the resulting modified table can be written out in a wide range of output formats. Using a powerful and extensible Java-based expression language new columns can be defined and row subsets selected for separate analysis. It offers a variety of ways to view and analyse tables, including a browser for the cell data themselves, viewers for information about table and column metadata, and facilities for 1-, 2-, 3- and higher-dimensional visualisation, calculating statistics and joining tables using flexible matching algorithms.
It understands a number of different astronomically important formats (including FITS and VOTable) and more formats can be added. Its aim is to provide most of the facilities that astronomers need for analysis and manipulation of source catalogues and other tables, though it can be used for non-astronomical data as well. TOPCAT: Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And TablesĪbstract: TOPCAT is an interactive graphical viewer and editor for tabular data.