Word: hdl
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...Cincinnati is one heart-disease patient who has benefited from drug therapy. A 55-year-old former printing-plant foreman, Michael and his brother Daniel, 58, a retired barber in Canonsburg, Pa., have a genetic disorder that results in very high levels of LDL and low levels of HDL. Daniel has suffered a heart attack, and both brothers have had bypass surgery. Now the Brunos are on low-saturated-fat diets and are taking lovastatin. In addition, Michael is taking gemfibrozil. Since the brothers started their programs, Michael's total cholesterol has fallen from 224 to 184, and Daniel...
Even though HDL's relationship to coronary heart disease was first noted in 1951, many people are still not being advised by their doctors to raise their good-cholesterol levels. The reason, says Dr. Robert Levy, president of New Jersey's Sandoz Research Institute, is that there is no absolute proof that raising HDL alone can lower a person's risk of heart disease. No convincing body of evidence from animal studies has yet demonstrated the value of raising HDL, and no clinical trial to date has specifically targeted humans with low HDL. "Much the same question existed...
...hopeful development is that scientists have learned how to derive synthetic HDL particles from natural HDL made in the body. At the Rogosin Institute, researchers are injecting this compound into rabbits to see if raising HDL protects them against atherosclerosis. Should such experiments succeed, it is conceivable that synthetic HDL could one day become an effective treatment for heart patients. Rogosin's Gordon notes, however, that this research "is still years away from clinical application...
...Just how HDL plays its apparently vital role in ridding the body of excess cholesterol is not entirely clear. The substance is, after all, only one element in an alphabet soup of particles that make up the so-called lipid transport system, which moves cholesterol through the bloodstream. Though individual cells can make their own cholesterol, much of their supply comes from the bloodstream, arriving from the liver aboard macromolecular ferryboats, known as very-low-density lipoproteins, or VLDLs. These carrier particles are loaded in the liver with cholesterol and dietary fats known as triglycerides, which are used by cells...
...Fred may be able to counter the effects of his gastric binges if he has enough of the HDL vigilantes in his blood. Largely produced in the liver and the intestines, these flat, disklike particles resemble "empty envelopes waiting to be filled," says Dr. Norman Miller, head of endocrinology at North Carolina's Bowman-Gray School of Medicine. As the VLDL and chylomicron particles unload their triglyceride cargoes into the body's cells, the particles become wrinkled like prunes. In the process, fragments containing proteins, fats and cholesterol break away. It is at this point that the unfilled HDL particles...