Word: rogosin
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...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...
...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...
...Stoffel, together with Dr. Helmut Borberg at the University of Cologne, is treating ten people, most of them with the same condition as Lewis', known to doctors as familial hypercholesterolemia, or FH. In Moscow, eminent Soviet Cardiologist Yevgeni Chazov is treating another ten FH patients, working closely with the Rogosin Institute in an unusual Soviet-American collaboration. Both overseas groups report that their patients' angina has decreased and that they perform better on stress tests...
...children with a rare and extreme version of FH. Yuko, 11, of Osaka, Japan, has been treated for nine years by Dr. Akira Yamamoto of the National Cardiovascular Center, earlier with a crude version of cholesterol filtering and more recently with a process similar to that used at Rogosin. Racked by angina at age two, she can now climb a flight of stairs without stopping. What is even more impressive to scientists is that X-ray studies show that her disease has actually regressed. "Atherosclerosis of her renal artery has completely disappeared," exults Yamamoto, and blockage around the aortic valve...
...melt away. Only in the past few years have doctors had the tools to achieve such reductions. LDL-pheresis is one example, while new experimental drugs like Mevinolin, particularly when combined with existing drugs, also hold great promise. "What's exciting now," observes Biochemist Thomas Parker, director of the Rogosin lipid laboratory, "is that for the first time researchers all over the world can begin to study the possibility of reversing atherosclerosis...