Adam’s Heart Valve Surgery Blog

Hey everybody,

Here’s an interesting new study out that I though you might find interesting… Not exactly related to heart valve surgery but still interesting nonetheless. Cheers, Adam

Twenty five years ago in a small Italian town, scientists found a family that may have the cure for heart disease and strokes running in their veins. Now American doctors are using that discovery to lower cholesterol levels in other people.The story starts in the small Italian town of Limone Sul Garda, where Dr. Cesare Sirtori discovered an older patient with high cholesterol, but with arteries as clean as a young boy’s. And it’s the same with his entire family.

“When you see a family with high cholesterol and no heart disease, you have to wonder,” Sirtori said.In fact, everyone in the village with a common ancestor had the same, healthy heart. They’d all benefited from a genetic mutation more than 220 years old.

“It’s a naturally occurring genetic mutation that is present in 40 living individuals,” said Los Angeles cardiologist PK Shah, who knew the gene created an especially powerful form of HDL, the body’s good cholesterol.

It was the Italians’ mutant HDL that was grabbing all the fatty plaque from the arteries and safely dumping it into the body’s liver, which then cleans it out.Without clogged arteries, there was no heart disease, and fewer strokes.Shah’s first test is on animals.

“We showed that giving the synthetic HDL could not only reduce plaque, but actually reverse it,” he said.Then, six years ago, Cleveland cardiologist Steven Nissen began injecting the HDL into a small group of humans.”Lo and behold, within five weeks there was already evidence of significant shrinkage of plaque,” said Nissen.

It’s just a 1 percent shrinkage, but if that adds up to 1 percent a month, there would be a huge benefit in just one year.The latest discovery came last November. Once again working with animals, Shah inject ed the mutant gene itself into bone marrow, and the animals immediately beg a n producing the super-HDL on their own, without needing any more injections.

More than half of their artery hyphen clogging plaque just disappeared.In a few years, heart patients will get the new treatment. If it works, doctors boldly predict an end to a top cause of pain, suffering and death.”This is the last century of coronary heart disease,” said Shah.

Source: NBC5

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 8:48 am and is filed under Healthy Hearts, Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print This Post | EMail This Post.