Preventive IVIG Therapy for Congenital Heart Block
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00460928. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
Preventive IVIG Therapy for Congenital Heart Block (The PITCH Study)
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Neonatal lupus (NL) is the name given to a group of conditions that can affect the babies of mothers who have certain autoantibodies against components of the body's cells that are called SSA/Ro and SSB/La. NL can appear as a temporary rash that usually goes away by the time the baby is 6 months old, or very rarely an abnormal blood or liver condition that also improves with time - or it can cause permanent and often life-threatening damage to the fetal heart, known as congenital heart block (CHB). In women with anti-Ro/La antibodies who are pregnant for the first time, only about 2% of the babies will develop CHB. But for a woman who has already had a child with CHB or NL rash, the risk of CHB in her next pregnancy is nearly 20%. Unfortunately, once complete (third degree) heart block has been unequivocally identified in a fetus, it has never been reversed with any of the therapies that have been tried to date. Our previous studies strongly indicate that scarring of the conduction system (the heart's own natural "pacemaker"), a consequence of inflammation triggered by the mother's antibodies, damages or even destroys the cells that allow the heart to beat at a normal rhythm. Instead, the damaged heart beats extremely slowly, to an extent that is fatal to nearly 20% of affected babies (with most deaths occurring as fetal demises). Nearly all surviving children with CHB require permanent implantation of a pacemaker device. Because it is so difficult to treat or repair the damaged heart, a high-priority strategy is to try to prevent the inflammatory process before irreversible scarring can occur. The aim of this clinical-based proposal is to determine whether treating the pregnant mother with intravenous immune globulin (IVIG) will prevent the development of CHB.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT00460928
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Early Phase 1
- Enrollment
- 20 participants
Conditions and interventions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years to 50 Years
- Sex
- Female
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Mar 31, 2007
- Primary completion
- May 31, 2009
- Completion
- May 31, 2009
- Last update posted
- Sep 29, 2019
2007 – 2009
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 2
- U.S. states
- 2
- U.S. cities
- 2
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saint Barnabas Medical Center | Livingston | New Jersey | 07039 | — |
| New York University School of Medicine / NYU-Hospital for Joint Diseases | New York | New York | 10016 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00460928, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Sep 29, 2019 · Synced Sep 5, 2026
Related: full search, browse by condition, browse by drug or therapy, browse by sponsor, browse by U.S. city.
Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT00460928 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.