Word: prostacyclines
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...scientists thought. Animal studies suggest that COX-2 also promotes chemical reactions that churn out prostacyclin, a protein that keeps blood vessels dilated and keeps platelets from clumping together to form blood clots. Doctors believe a drop in prostacyclin may also be behind the increased incidence of heart attacks and strokes in COX-2 users. In separate studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week, researchers found that high-dose Celebrex users were three times as likely as nonusers to die from a heart or stroke event, while those taking Vioxx had twice the chance of suffering...
LUNG RESCUE Finally, a way to treat a condition in which blood pressure in the lungs soars: use intravenous doses of the drug prostacyclin. The malady can show up in people who have taken the diet pills fen/phen or Redux--that's one reason they are off the market...
...other researchers. PGs often work in antagonistic pairs. One, for example, lowers blood pressure, while another raises it. One dilates bronchial tubes, a second constricts them. One promotes the inflammatory process, another inhibits it. A type called thromboxanes, discovered in platelets by Samuelsson in 1973, helps blood to clot; prostacyclin, a PG identified by Vane in 1976, is the most powerful natural inhibitor of clotting...
...platelet fighter is that old standby, aspirin. Results so far have been equivocal, but, says Goodman, "many doctors, including myself, tell patients with a very high risk of heart disease to take half an aspirin a day." A drug for possible future use is a synthetic version of prostacyclin, a chemical related to thromboxane but produced by the cells lining the artery and having exactly the opposite effect: it relaxes blood vessels and prevents platelets from clumping...
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