University of Dundee: Clinical Pharmacology & Therappuetics

Uni shield

Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics,
Ninewells Hospital & Medical School,
Dundee, DD1 9SY, Scotland, UK
Phone: +44 1382 Fax: +44 1382
e-mail to a.d.struthers@dundee.ac.uk

Professor Allan Struthers

Funding		Current areas of reseach Cardiovascular medicine - my group focuses on cardiac failure and is funded mainly from the British Heart Foundation. Aldosterone My group was the first to describe aldosterone induced vasculopathy and identify many new harmful effects of aldosterone e.g.. aldosterone dramatically reduces vascular nitric oxide and has harmful autonomic effects in the early morning period which contributes to the well known peak in cardiac deaths in the early morning.. Such work has already led to a positive mortality trial result in heart failure and this group is currently exploring whether aldosterone blockade will also produce similar cardiovascular benefits in other cardiovascular diseases.


		ACE activity My group pioneered and validated the use of serum ACE as a routine clinical test to assess noncompliance with ACE inhibitor therapy. They also identified two new and previously unrecognized endogenous regulators of vascular ACE activity i.e. CNP and aldosterone.
		B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) We were one of the first groups to show that plasma BNP was a convenient marker of the presence or not of left ventricular dysfunction.
		QT interval A major finding of my group is that prolongation of the QT intervals accurately predicts the future occurrence of cardiac death in diabetics, in stroke patients and in patients with peripheral vascular disease. The next stage of this work has determined that this is because the QT interval is more prolonged the more cardiac abnormalities are present.
		Endothelial Dysfunction We were the first to show that aldosterone blockade dramatically improves endothelial dysfunction.