My Healthy Heart Blogs
New Heart Disease Risk Factor on the Molecular Level
07/05/07
Researchers have identified a risk factor for coronary artery disease that adversely affects otherwise healthy people.
Elevated levels of serum myeloperoxidase (MPO) increased the risk of coronary artery disease by 49 percent—even among healthy people, or non-diabetic people with healthy levels of cholesterol and who did not suffer from hypertension. Still, traditional indicators, like high cholesterol and hypertension, are more strongly associated with coronary artery disease than elevated MPO.
MPO is an enzyme that is part of the immune system. It helps destroy alien or foreign agents in the body, like bacteria or viruses. Earlier research had already associated the enzyme with heart problems in patients with chest pain or suspected acute coronary syndrome, but had not been researched in healthy people.
Dr. Stanley L. Hazen, head of the section of preventive cardiology and cardiac rehabilitation at the Cleveland Clinic, and one of the authors of the report, has studied this enzyme for more than 10 years. In one article printed in The Washington Post, Hazen declared the risk associated with high levels of MPO "...is roughly comparable to the risk of elevated LDL cholesterol."
Hazen and other reserachers published the study, printed in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology. They measured the levels of MPO in thousands of healthy people. Eight years later, they compared MPO levels of the 1,138 people who developed coronary artery disease to the 2,237 who did not.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a test for MPO last year, which is currently used to test MPO levels in people already sufferering from heart disease. The test, called cardioMPO, may be used in the future to measure MPO levels in heart disease-free people just as blood and blood pressure tests are used to identify risk factors such as high cholesterol and hypertension.
Sources:
The Journal of the American College of Cardiology
The Washington Post
Chemi-tek.com
TheHeart.org
