NEW YORK TIMES: Two major studies by leading research groups published on Wednesday independently identified mutations in a single gene that protect against heart attacks by keeping levels of triglycerides — a kind of fat in the blood — very low for a lifetime.
The findings are expected to lead to a push to develop drugs that mimic the effect of the mutations, potentially offering the first new class of drugs to combat heart disease in decades, experts say. Statins, which reduce LDL cholesterol, another cause of heart disease, became blockbusters in the late 1980s. Since then, there have been no major new drugs approved for lowering heart disease risk. But experts caution that drug development takes years and that there are no guarantees that new treatments will work as hoped…
The discovery announced on Wednesday was hinted at in 2008 in a much smaller study of the Amish conducted by researchers from the University of Maryland’s medical school. One in 20 Amish people has a mutation that destroys a gene, involved in triglyceride metabolism, compared with one in 150 Americans generally. The scientists were intrigued but did not have enough data to nail down the gene’s role in heart attacks… (more)
