Word: normale
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Less than a year ago, Stormie appeared to be a normal, active child. "Just an awful sweet little old girl," according to Joe Lunsford, her neighbor in Cumby, Texas (pop. 647). There was just one indication that something might be wrong: mysterious wartlike bumps covered her elbows, knuckles, knees and toes. Though her mother Lois Sue, a waitress in Cumby, had first noticed the small bumps on her daughter's buttocks when Stormie was three months old, it was not until last summer that she found a doctor who would take them seriously. Dr. David Bilheimer, medical director...
...take 30 gm a day of cholestid, a cholesterol-lowering drug similar to the cholestyramine used in the N.H.L.B.I. trial. Such drugs are expensive as well as unpleasant: as much as $200 for a month's supply. But, together with diet, they have helped the Melmans "make ourselves normal," as Lois puts it. Doctors hope that the results of the N.H.L.B.I. trial will convince pharmaceutical companies that there is a need and a market for less expensive, more palatable drugs...
...blood. One out of every 500 Americans suffers from a moderate form of this disorder, but Stormie was among the one in a million whose genetic makeup produces an extreme variety. Bilheimer was shocked to find that the child's cholesterol was at nearly nine times the normal level for someone her age. It had already taken a toll on her blood vessels, as the doctor learned when he held a stethoscope to her neck and legs. There, instead of silence, he heard the ominous, whooshing sound of blood struggling to get through blocked arteries...
...encouraged by the fact that Stormie's cholesterol level is declining; they hope that the wartlike bumps will soon begin to disappear. Scientists across the country meanwhile expect to learn from her singular experience. "It was FH patients like Stormie who taught us how cholesterol is controlled in normal people," says Molecular Geneticist Michael Brown of the University of Texas. "Science very frequently advances by studying the most extreme cases...
Injury to a healthy artery lining would be swiftly repaired. But this is not the case with atherosclerosis. Again, all the usual suspects-smoking, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels-appear to interfere with the normal healing process. As a result, instead of arteries being repaired, a cycle of destruction begins...