Inflammation and heart disease

[Guest guest]

No Easy Cure

Antibiotics don't help prevent heart attacks, show two large new studies

in The New England Journal of Medicine. The findings deal a blow to a

popular theory that bacteria found lurking in heart tissue could spark

inflammation and disease. Cardiologists had hoped the theory might explain

why many patients who don't smoke, have high cholesterol or a family history

of disease still have heart attacks. " What we have learned is that bacteria

may be part of the start of blockage in the artery, back when people are in

their 20s and 30s, but after a few decades of smoking and obesity and

everything else, treating the original cause is a little too late, " said

P. Cannon, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in

Boston and the lead investigator of one of the studies.

Bug attack Cannon's study involved 4,162 people from eight countries who

had recently had heart attacks. Half of the patients received 400 milligrams

of gatifloxacin--an antibiotic used to treat chlamydia pneumonia, the

bacteria considered the leading culprit--every day for 10 days; then they

took the pill 10 days a month for about two years. The remaining patients

got placebo.

The other study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, included

4,012 patients with stable coronary artery disease. They received either 600

mg. weekly of azithromycin--another antibiotic that targets chlamydia--or a

placebo for one year. Doctors monitored these patients for four years. In

both studies, treatment groups experienced no fewer heart attacks than

placebo groups.

Back to basics Lowenstein, professor of medicine and cardiology at

The s Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said the

findings would disappoint many colleagues. " Cardiologists have been holding

their breaths waiting for the results of these trials, " he said.

Cannon said the results show the importance of sticking to proven methods

of heart disease prevention: proper diet and exercise, plus

cholesterol-lowering drugs.

--Randi Epstein