I beg your pardon...?
Posted on 01/12/2007 3:45:48 PM PST by blam
Shrinking telomeres linked to heart disease
00:01 12 January 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Michael Day
The gradual erosion of telomeres – the strands of DNA that cap our chromosomes and wear away with each cell division – may play a pivotal role in heart disease. People who go on to have heart attacks have much shorter telomeres than those who remain healthy, a major new study has shown.
Researchers from Leicester and Glasgow Universities in the UK took blood samples from 484 middle-aged men with moderately raised cholesterol, plus 1058 control subjects. They compared the telomere lengths in their white bloods cells at that time and then five years later.
Both patients and controls with the shortest telomeres five years on were twice as likely to have developed serious heart disease. Intriguingly, the study also found that drugs called statins, which are better known for their cholesterol-lowering properties, appeared to alleviate the effects of telomere damage – and may even have protected telomeres against degradation.
However, the protective effect of statins was only seen in patients with comparatively short telomeres. “In patients whose telomeres were wearing away at a normal rate, statin treatment didn’t make any difference,” says Leicester University cardiologist Nilesh Samani, who led the research. “This suggests that statins were protecting against the worst cases of telomere degradation. Without statins they might have been even shorter.”
These unexpected discoveries provide important new insights into the causes of arterial disease – the western world’s biggest killer.
Statin suspicion
For years, doctors and scientists have suspected that another property of statins, unrelated to their cholesterol-lowering ability, explained how they protected patients from heart disease and stroke so effectively.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
I beg your pardon...?
Fascinating. Genetic therapy might be close.
Shrinkage is not good.
"I was in the pool ! I was in the pool !"
Like a scared turtle!
"I was in the gene pool!!!"
Who funded this study, and were any drug manufacturers involved?
Is there a test to determine your chances of getting heart disease so that you and your physician can take some kind of preemptive action?
I'm liking my Lipitor more every day.
Number 488 on my list of things to worry about.
Lovastatin here.
Had your stent yet? ;)
No. At 63, I haven't had any problems of any kind. I have my nitro-glyceryn near by though.
I've had two brothers die of heart attacks at age 51. (one was older & one was younger)
Got my stent last year at 63. A most memorable experience.
Sorry to hear that. My 59 year old neighbor had one last year too.
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