STUDY: VIRUS MAY RETRIGGER ARTERIAL PLAQUE.Byline: Gina Kolata Gina Kolata (born in Baltimore, Maryland, February 25, 1948) is a science journalist for The New York Times. Her sister was the environmental activist Judi Bari. The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Each year, in medical centers around the country, cardiologists open clogged arteries, only to have the obstructions grow back in about half the patients. But no one has been able to predict which patients will have this regrowth Re`growth´ n. 1. The act of regrowing; a second or new growth. The regrowth of limbs which had been cut off. - A. B. Buckley. or prevent it. Now, researchers at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute have preliminary evidence that the regrowth of plaque is spurred by cytomegalovirus cytomegalovirus (sī'təmĕg'əlōvī`rəs), member of the herpesvirus family that can cause serious complications in persons with weakened immune systems. , a virus so common that it is found in about two-thirds of elderly Americans. If the finding is confirmed in larger studies, it could suggest ways to select patients most likely to benefit from the opening of their arteries and it also could suggest ways to prevent plaque from growing back. Hundreds of thousands of patients each year have procedures to open clogged arteries by scraping them clean with a sharp blade or squashing plaque with tiny balloons. The finding is particularly provocative, some scientists say, because it is consistent with another study, by the same group, two years ago that also linked the virus to plaque formation and, in doing so, suggested a link between cancer and heart disease. ``It is intriguing,'' said Dr. Jeffrey Leiden, who is chief of cardiology cardiology Medical specialty dealing with heart diseases and disorders. It began with the 1749 publication by Jean Baptiste de Sénac of contemporary knowledge of the heart. Diagnostic methods improved in the 19th century, and in 1905 the electrocardiograph was invented. at the University of Chicago School Chicago School Group of architects and engineers who in the 1890s exploited the twin developments of structural steel framing and the electrified elevator, paving the way for the ubiquitous modern-day skyscraper. of Medicine. But, Leiden cautioned, the new study ``is an indirect measure, a correlation.'' For that reason, he said, ``it doesn't provide a causal link.'' The new study, by Dr. Stephen Epstein Stephen E. Epstein, M.D, is a physician. Formerly Chief of the Cardiology Branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland for over 30 years, became Director of Vascular Biology Research at the Cardiovascular Research , who is chief of the cardiology branch at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and his colleagues, involved 75 patients with heart disease who were about to have atherectomies, which involves cutting out plaque from a clogged artery. Epstein found that 49 patients, or 75 percent, had been infected with cytomegalovirus, as evidenced by antibodies to the virus. When Epstein looked again at the 49 patients six months after their atherectomies, he found that 21 of them, or 43 percent, had had their plaque grow back, clogging their arteries again. But, he said, he found, ``much to our amazement,'' that just 2 of the 26 patients without cytomegalovirus infections, or 8 percent, had had a regrowth of their plaque, known as restenosis. |
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