A heart drug approved earlier this year for use in African Americans not only can improve their quality of life and reduce their risk of dying from heart failure, but -- unusual for new therapies -- actually can save money.

The drug could cut overall health care costs for people with heart failure by 9 percent, according to a study being published today in the journal Circulation. Dr. Derek Angus, professor of critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, led the study, which included researchers at several universities and companies.

The drug, called BiDil, is the first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a specific racial group. It has been controversial, in part because race is more easily defined by social convention than it is biologically. It also has raised concerns because the maker, NitroMed Inc., won 13 years of patent protection for a combination of two old drugs -- isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine -- available in generic form.

Dr. Angus and his colleagues based their analysis on a study of the drug's effectiveness that appeared in November 2004 in the New England Journal of Medicine. That study looked at how patients fared physically; the new analysis -- sponsored by NitroMed -- tried to estimate the treatment's cost-effectiveness.

The researchers concluded that the health care costs for patients receiving BiDil, including hospitalizations and doctors visits, averaged $15,384 during the 12-month study, compared with the $19,144 average for patients who received the best-available therapy but did not received BiDil.

Those costs did not include the costs of the drug itself, however, which can be $6 a day, Dr. Angus noted. Once the drug costs are factored in, the savings narrow to $1,730 annually.

The savings suggest that NitroMed's pricing of the drug is not unreasonable, Dr. Angus said. But he acknowledged that the savings would be greater if patients were prescribed the equivalent doses of the generic drugs that constitute BiDil.

The individual drugs might cost 60 cents or $1 a day and, taken together, would be just as effective as BiDil. But taking multiple pills is less convenient than taking BiDil alone, so patients would be less likely to comply with the drug regimen, he added.

Dr. Angus also cautioned that the findings are not necessarily applicable to patient groups other than African Americans with moderate-to-severe heart failure.