Protein can warn of heart risks, local research finds

liver411

Methodist Hospital discovers substance can predict disease better than a cholesterol test.



By Diana Penner

[email protected]

November 12, 2002


There could soon be a better barometer than cholesterol-testing for identifying people at risk for heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular disease.

Two medical journals this week are publishing studies, including one done by researchers at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, that highlight a liver-produced substance that can warn of impending heart problems better than cholesterol alone.

  




People with normal cholesterol can show high levels of the substance, called C-reactive protein, giving an early warning of disease, researchers say.

Dr. Carlos A. Labarrere, with the Methodist Research Institute, is the lead author of a study published this week in The Lancet, a weekly British medical journal.

Labarrere's study focused on heart-transplant patients, some of whom rapidly developed the same kind of coronary artery disease that plagues many in the general public -- their blood vessels became clogged, and fast. The study showed C-reactive protein levels can warn of impending troubles, Labarrere said.

That information is important for transplant patients but also bolsters evidence that the protein can be used routinely to diagnose future heart trouble, he said.

Also this week, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston are publishing a similar study in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The results of that study will be released Wednesday. But the researchers reported in 2000 that the screening can reveal more than cholesterol testing alone and noted that nearly half of all heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol readings.

The C-reactive protein screening isn't routinely done, but Labarrere predicted it soon will be.

"This is coming," he said. "It's going to happen in the very near future."


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Call Diana Penner at 1-317-444-6249.