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Heart
Disease Vaccines Show Promise
(Reuters
Health) - Several vaccines are being developed to reduce heart
disease risk factors, and could one day be used to help prevent
heart attacks, according to a presentation here Tuesday at the
Fourth Annual Conference on Vaccine Research.
Dr. Carl R.
Alving of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver
Spring, Maryland, presented evidence implicating various infectious
agents in the development of atherosclerosis, or hardening of
the arteries, and described developments in vaccines that may
reduce heart disease risk factors such as high cholesterol.
Alving noted
that the fatty plaques that obstruct the arteries in atherosclerosis
have been found to contain bacteria including Chlamydia, cytomegalovirus
and Helicobacter pylori.
``Studies
have shown that if you inject a test animal with Chlamydia, it
will increase the amount of atherosclerosis that occurs,'' Alving
told Reuters Health. ``If you then treat these animals with antibiotics,
it will reduce the amount of atherosclerosis that forms. It has
also been shown that if you vaccinate against the Chlamydia organism,
you can achieve the same effect.
``The value
of a vaccine against Chlamydia would be tremendously increased
from a commercial and public health standpoint if atherosclerosis
could be decreased,'' Alving pointed out. He mentioned that there
are at least a half-dozen studies under way to determine whether
Chlamydia vaccine does indeed reduce heart and blood vessel disease
in humans.
AVANT Immunotherapeutics
in Needham, Massachusetts has recently completed a preliminary
trial of vaccine against cholesterol ester transfer protein (CETP),
Alving stated. CETP is an enzyme that transfers cholesterol from
high-density lipoproteins (HDL), the so-called ``good cholesterol,''
to low-density lipoproteins (LDL), also known as ``bad cholesterol.''
The vaccine boosts good cholesterol levels and reduces bad cholesterol
by blocking this enzyme.
``The possibility
of developing infectious disease and metabolic vaccines for atherosclerosis
risk factors may be immediately on the horizon,'' Alving concluded.
Reference
Source 89
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