Word: lipoproteins
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...pair spent much of the 1970s painstakingly deciphering how the body regulates cholesterol levels. Just as oil and water cannot mix without a detergent, cholesterol cannot enter the bloodstream unless it is ferried within a complex of molecules called low-density lipoprotein, or LDL. The Texas researchers found that the LDL ferries travel to docks called LDL receptors. More important, they learned that low cholesterol levels in the liver trigger the production of more receptors, which pull LDL out of the blood. But if the liver does not make enough receptors, the LDL levels in the blood will rise...
...Rogosin Institute, Lewis became a guinea pig in an experimental treatment program. Once a week he would drive to the hospital to undergo a procedure called LDL-pheresis, a filtering process that removes from the blood the most dangerous form of cholesterol, known as LDL (for low-density lipoprotein). Now, after a year of treatments, Lewis is remarkably improved. His once crippling angina is "almost nonexistent," he reports. Thick deposits of cholesterol that used to be visible on his hands have largely vanished. He has resumed physical activity. "I'm walking half a mile in eight or nine minutes...
...plasma through a jar of porous beads coated with an antibody that traps LDL. The beauty of the procedure, says its developer, German Biochemist Wilhelm Stoffel, is that "the antibody picks out only LDL." Other important blood components, including a valuable form of cholesterol called HDL (high-density lipoprotein), are all returned to the patient. In fact, according to a study published this week by the Rogosin group, this "good" cholesterol actually rises in patients treated with LDL-pheresis...
...alternative approach to unclogging the arteries is based on what scientists have learned about cholesterol. Plaques are more likely to form when blood cholesterol is high, and particularly when the cholesterol takes the form known as "low-density lipoprotein" (LDL). By lowering the levels of cholesterol in the blood or by ensuring that most of it occurs as "high density lipoprotein" (HDL), the risk of heart attack can be substantially reduced. Although, several drugs have been developed to improve blood cholesterol levels, most have been associated with severe side effects...
...annual Whitehead Institute Symposium at M.I.T. last week, one keynote address was a rare display of virtuosity. Michael Brown of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas vividly described the twelve years of work that he and Colleague Joseph Goldstein had carried out on the low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor, a molecule that ferries cholesterol-rich particles from the bloodstream into the cell. His explanations were crisply organized, and his slides went beyond standard diagrams to include photographs of patients. Said one listener of Brown and Goldstein: "Their work is dazzling...