Posted on 01/05/2005 4:19:08 PM PST by neverdem
Reducing the levels of a protein secreted by the body during inflammation may be as powerful in slowing heart disease and preventing heart attacks and deaths as lowering cholesterol, two teams of researchers are reporting.
The studies, published in Thursday's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, provide the strongest evidence yet for the role of the protein, known as CRP for C-reactive protein, in heart disease. The participants were patients with severe heart disease who were taking high doses of statin drugs, which lower both cholesterol and CRP. Lower CRP levels, the researchers found, were linked to a slower progression of atherosclerosis and fewer heart attacks and deaths. And this effect was independent of cholesterol's effect on heart disease.
"What we now have is hard clinical evidence that reducing CRP is at least as important as lowering cholesterol," said Dr. Paul Ridker, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who was the lead author on one of the studies.
But other heart disease researchers cautioned that more research was needed to prove that CRP directly causes heart disease. And most agreed that because the new studies involved only people with severe heart disease, it remains unknown whether healthy people would benefit from reducing their levels of CRP.
Still, the study investigators said they suspect that the results will be shown to apply more broadly. If they are correct, it could open a huge new market for the already popular statins - people whose cholesterol levels are normal but who have high levels of CRP. Of people who have heart attacks, half have normal cholesterol readings.
Dr. Ridker's study addressed the question of whether CRP levels independently predicted heart attacks and deaths. The second study, by Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic and his colleagues, asked whether CRP independently predicted heart disease progression.
In both cases, the investigators concluded, the answer was yes. They, like most researchers in this field, have received support from drug companies and Dr. Ridker also is an inventor of a test for CRP, which his university licensed. He and his lab profit from the use of the test.
CRP is made in the liver and also in the walls of coronary arteries and possibly elsewhere in the body. Its levels, which can be measured with a simple blood test, often rise and remain high in patients who have chronic inflammation from conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, for example, or periodontal disease. Patients with chronic inflammation also have an increased risk of heart disease. Some heart disease experts said the new studies offered persuasive evidence that doctors should focus on keeping CRP levels low in patients with severe disease.
"This is missing link evidence," said Dr. Sidney Smith, a cardiologist at the University of North Carolina who is a past president of the American Heart Association and co-chairman of a committee of the heart association and the American College of Cardiology that that sets treatment guidelines.
But others said that CRP could instead be a marker for something else that statin drugs are doing to reduce heart disease risk.
"These are very important papers," said Dr. James Cleeman, who is coordinator of the National Cholesterol Education Program at the National Heart, and Blood Institute. "They are provocative. But we need to recognize that the relationship between CRP and heart disease is a developing story. This adds to the evidence but I'm not sure it settles the issue."
CRP levels in healthy young people are low, usually less than 1 milligram per liter of blood, but they rise with age and with obesity, diabetes, smoking, and a sedentary life. A third of the population has levels greater than 3, which have been associated with heart disease risk, Dr. Ridker said.
If people lose weight, stop smoking, exercise or take oral diabetes drugs, their CRP levels fall.
The evidence is increasing that CRP and heart disease are somehow linked. More than 30 studies have found that the higher the level of CRP, the greater the risk of heart disease and that CRP predicts risk independently of other factors, including cholesterol. Scientists have developed hypotheses to explain why, proposing that the protein could cause plaque to develop in coronary arteries, leading plaque to burst open and blood clots to form that then block arteries and cause heart attacks.
Some drug companies have started programs to develop drugs that specifically target CRP and prevent its synthesis.
But what these findings mean remains uncertain. The fact that CRP levels drop with exercise and weight loss, for example, has led some experts to argue that the protein is a marker of heart disease risk, not a cause, as gray hair is a marker but not a cause of aging .
CRP was discovered about 70 years ago by scientists who were trying to understand why some strep bacteria caused disease and others did not. It was named because it was found in the third band on an electrophoresis gel, referred to as band C by scientists. About half a century ago, doctors noticed that CRP flooded the blood after a heart attack and, for a while, they used it to help diagnose heart attacks.
Dr. Ridker's study involved 3,745 patients who had been hospitalized with heart attacks or severe chest pain from blocked coronary arteries and then were followed for two and a half years. Dr. Ridker said that when the study, sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb, was being planned several years ago, the thought was that it would ask whether moderate statin therapy - 40 milligrams a day with the company's Pravachol - was as effective in preventing heart attacks as more intense therapy with 80 milligrams a day of Pfizer's statin, Lipitor.
"I said, 'This is a good study, but it can be better,' " Dr. Ridker said. He proposed also asking about CRP - would people in the study with lower CRP levels have fewer heart attacks and deaths?
"My idea at the time was that I would be happy to find a 10 percent residual benefit or a 20 percent residual benefit," from low CRP levels, Dr. Ridker said. "We never dreamed we'd get a risk reduction as large as the risk reduction from lowering LDL cholesterol."
Dr. Nissen's study, sponsored by Pfizer, examined plaque in the coronary arteries of 502 patients with heart disease, comparing intense to moderate statin therapy and using the same doses of the same drugs as Dr. Ridker's study used. Intense therapy resulted in lower cholesterol levels and slower growth of plaque, Dr. Nissen reported. But he also suspected that something else was going on, because some patients seemed to be doing much better than others with the same cholesterol levels.
Upon further analysis, Dr. Nissen found that levels of CRP dropped independently of cholesterol, and were independently associated with a slowing of disease progression. In patients who achieved both low levels of CRP and low levels of cholesterol, plaque actually regressed in their coronary arteries, Dr. Nissen found.
"I'm looking right at the plaque and when your CRP level is reduced, you are stopping the disease," Dr. Nissen said. "We are saying that CRP is a direct participant in atherosclerosis."
The next step, Dr. Ridker said, is to see if reducing CRP levels can prevent heart attacks in healthy people. His new study will enroll 15,000 people with normal cholesterol levels but higher than average levels of CRP, above 2 milligrams per liter of blood. The participants will be randomly assigned to take 20 milligrams a day of a statin, AstraZeneca's Crestor, or a placebo.
Some experts say the new findings make it clear that doctors should monitor CRP levels in patients with severe heart disease and do whatever it takes, including giving high doses of the most powerful statins, to get levels below 2 milligrams per liter of blood.
"What these two papers are saying is that not only is CRP a risk factor on its own, but we should be aggressively treating it," said Dr. Valentin Fuster, a past president of the American Heart Association and director of the cardiovascular institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
But Dr. Daniel Rader, a heart disease researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said that may not be so easy in patients who are already doing everything possible.
"You've already counseled them about life style, you've already given a statin, you're already targeting LDL cholesterol to less than 70," a very low level that is recommended by the current guidelines," he said. "So if you find a high CRP, what do you do? Do you tell the patient, 'Oh, this is bad. You're at high risk?' "
A difficult question, Dr. Ridker said, but one he predicted will not arise too often.
Most patients with severe heart disease are not taking high doses of statins, he said, so there is room for doctors to experiment with higher doses and different drugs to reduce CRP levels, if necessary.
"There is a huge payoff if physicians understand that they need to titrate not just the cholesterol but also the CRP," Dr. Ridker said. "That alone will save tens of thousands of lives, right there."
The article headlining this thread is about the recent hoopla over C reactive protein and atherosclerosis. Historically, all the clear evidence presenting itself to folks looking at atherosclerosis, was that of an immune reponse to the inner walls of arteries. That is what is observed at the beginning of and throughout the progression of the disease. Atherosclerotic plaques are not caused by junk food deposits. Their cause is unknown and the mechanism is immune attack. The initial disease starts with monocyte infiltration into the vessel walls. That is the beginning and bulk of the initial plaque.
If the B. burgdorfi(sp) aren't killed right away during the initial primary stage of the disease, the joint attack is quite severe. The bug's a spirochete and like syphilis, the disease has 3 stages.
I worry that I have it. What are the three stages?
There's a blood test for ~$75, that can pick up bug antibodies. Pen. can then be given to kill the bugs to prevent further injury. I never noted that AL was in the disease range though. It's up here, so I have a bunch of pill bottles on the shelf, each containing one deer tick in case I ever got the bullseye, or sick.
2nd stage is a kind of remission. In the 3rd, the bugs do some quick and severe destruction. THe range maps showing disease occurence stats are common on the better google links. CDC, NIH ect...
Daily Pauling Therapy - The Natural Cure for Heart Disease as Described by Linus Pauling on Video
VITAMIN C, NATURE'S MIRACULOUS HEALING MISSILE
Linus Pauling—Scientist for the Ages
Linus Pauling, PhD: The Last Interview
Linus Pauling on Heart Disease
The Famous Pauling/Rath Heart Disease Therapy
Vitamin C and Vascular Disease
Ping
Please check out the links on my post #47.
Exactly. But you and your husband might want to also check into the Dr. Pauling recommendations. (See post #47 above with the links.)
Pauling was instrumental in coming up with the concept of Vitamin C being PIVOTAL in helping to heal chronic inflammation. The research that he and others did essentially indicate that heart disease is a form of "scurvy" and that Vitamin C helps to heal the inflammation.
See Post #47 above for links.
Is it the protein that's bad, or is it the protein-producing inflammation that's bad?
That and the Vitamin C/proline/lysine therapy ought to do it. See post #47 above for links about this treatment for heart disease.
You might also benefit from the Vitamin C/lysine/proline therapy that Dr. Pauling and others have come up with years ago (but other docs scoffed at for years until they realized it had merit).
Thanks. I have the information now.
Thanks......I've done HOURS and HOURS of research on RA....believe me.....mine fits only PART of the Reiters Syndrome......and fits other RA symptoms better.....it's a squishy disease, that's for sure. And, infection is, I believe, the cause. That said, it could be strep, as you say, or it could be other infections, also......I do NOT go to the Arthritis Foundation for all of my info, that's for sure. In fact, I don't go to a Rheumatologist any longer, either.
Thanks.....I already take more Vit C than the average person (and eat more veggies than the average person).....the lysine and proline, though could be an issue.
Hell with all those "theories", drink lots of RED WINE.
What do you recommend to get inflammation down? It's an ongoing situation for me, which I fight with diet that includes high protein, few carbs, none of which are bread, pasta, sugar or other high-glycemics, and a fair amount of fish oil. It usually works but not always.
Barry Sears has a new book out, publication date TODAY, "The Anti-Inflammation Zone." He's the Zone Diet author, whose diet I try to follow. Buying his new book at amazon today to see how he's fine-tuning for inflammation and also to see what he has to say about CRP.
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