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[Sam81]

What We Learn When Two Ruthless Killers, Heart Disease and Cancer, Reveal a Common Root

Apologies if it was posted before

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/magazine/can-heart-disease-shed-light-on-cancer.html

Posted by Lawleycpa on ST

" Two cardiologists, Peter Libby and Paul Ridker, were thinking about plaque formation in a different way. Libby and Ridker acknowledged the role of cholesterol and lipids. But just as important was another variable, seldom discussed: inflammation — the recruitment and activation of certain immune cells. These activated immune cells infiltrated blood vessels early in the course of coronary disease and enabled plaques to grow and rupture. “Bad” cholesterol was a necessary part of the equation — it was these lipid deposits that may incite the immune cells, they proposed — but it was not sufficient."

"If inflammation triggers coronary disease, might targeting it directly — beyond simply reducing cholesterol — decrease the risk of heart attacks? Over the course of a decade, Libby and Ridker found themselves focusing on a molecule involved in inflammation called interleukin-1 beta. By the mid-2000s, they heard of a new drug — an interleukin-1-beta inhibitor — that was used to treat exceedingly rare inflammatory diseases"

"The results, published this August, are provocative: Despite no change in cholesterol levels, there was a demonstrable reduction in heart attacks, stroke and cardiovascular death, particularly at higher doses of the drug. But what caught my attention was a separate analysis that asked a seemingly unrelated question: Might the drug also reduce the risk of cancer? In a paper published in The Lancet, Ridker and his colleagues found that drug-treated patients had a drop in all cancer mortality."