Protein Has a Big Role in Heart Disease

The New York Times > Health > Two Studies Suggest a Protein Has a Big Role in Heart Disease
By GINA KOLATA
(From Maria Inês Reinert Azambuja)

Reducing the levels of a certain protein secreted by the body may be as powerful a tool in slowing heart disease and preventing heart attacks and cardiac-related death as lowering cholesterol, two teams of researchers are reporting today.

The studies, being published in The New England Journal of Medicine, provide the strongest evidence yet that the protein - known as CRP, for C-reactive protein - plays a role in heart disease.

The participants were patients with severe heart disease who were taking high doses of statin drugs, which reduce 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 the effect of lowering cholesterol.

"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, the lead author of one of the studies.

Há sempre uma esperança ou uma ilusão de que atrás dos interesses econômicos e de mercado haja novas conquistas com benefício para a saúde da população.

There is an expectation or ilusion, behid the economic and market interests to get new achievements with benefit to humankind.