Heart/Stroke: IMPROVE HEART HEALTH

Turning Back the Ticker’s Clock?

BY:ERIC FEIL

Drugs have long been a boon in lowering cholesterol and slowing the approach of heart maladies. But now a study suggests the statin drug Crestor may play an even bigger role—turning heart disease around.

“The holy grail has always been to reverse the disease,” says study leader and cardiologist Steven Nissen, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic. After two years of taking the maximum dose—40 milligrams a day—two-thirds of the 349 people in a study conducted by Astra-Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, the drug’s manufacturer, not only saw “bad cholesterol” (LDL) levels drop 53 percent—to all-time lows of 60 (current guidelines recommend a number below 70)—and “good cholesterol” (HDL) rise by more than ten percent. They also found a six to nine percent decrease in artery blockage buildup. But does that mean the Holy Grail is within reach?

Although there’s the potential to lower the risk of heart attacks and the need for angioplasty or bypass surgery, it does not mean cardiac cleanliness is merely a few pills away. “It’s an incremental step forward,” says David Gordon, MD, PhD, of the division of heart and vascular diseases at the National Heart, Lung and Blood institute. “But the results may be skewed somewhat. People dropped out of the study, and they may have been getting worse. And the measurements of artery thickness, even in the same person, can be different because of random fluctuation, not due to any actual progress.”

Additionally, Crestor has been linked with side effects, including damaged liver function, muscle pain and, in rare cases, the degenerative muscle disorder rhabdomyolysis, which can lead to kidney failure. But those effects may not be different from those related to other statins, Dr. Gordon notes. Ultimately, “studies like this are encouraging,” he says. “With advances in research in many drugs, there’s more promise that we’ll be able to halt the progression of heart disease and potentially reverse it over the next few years, all with the ultimate goal of stopping arteriosclerosis in its tracks.”

When it comes to fighting cholesterol, though, drugs aren’t the only answer. The University of Toronto recently completed a study of men and women just over age 59 who spent a year consuming a diet high in viscous fibers, soy protein, almonds and plant sterol margarine. At the conclusion, more than 30 percent had lowered LDL levels by better than 20 percent—comparable to results of participants who took a cholesterol-lowering statin drug for a month before incorporating the eating changes.

“The average person can do a lot to improve their health through diet,” says study author David Jenkins, MD, PhD, DSc, professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto. “Eating these foods individually can help, but combining them can have an even bigger impact.”