New Drug to Fight Cardiovascular Disease

A new therapy being studied in non-human primates by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and colleagues is demonstrating promise as a potential tool for combating cardiovascular disease by increasing good cholesterol and lowering triglycerides in the blood.  While there are several effective therapies available on the market for lowering LDL, or bad cholesterol, modern medicine has yet to find a good way to raise HDL, even if you take a statin or some other therapy to lower your LDL, the risk of having coronary heart disease is still around 50 percent.  For the current study, researchers tested a drug in non-human primates and found that it increased HDL cholesterol and lowered triglycerides. The researchers will next evaluate whether the drug has the ability to stimulate cholesterol movement out of the arteries, where it has accumulated and formed lesions.  According to Ryan Temel, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pathology and lipid sciences at Wake Forest Baptist. “Coronary artery disease is the number one killer of people in the United States.”