Cholesterol drugs benefit blood vessels

BOSTON - Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may promote the development of new blood vessels, or at least help to preserve existing vessels, which could explain why they work so well to prevent heart disease, say researchers.

One of the drugs, simvastatin, helped in the growth of tiny blood vessels in the hind legs of rabbits and in tissue grown in laboratory dishes, say Dr Kenneth Walsh and colleagues at the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.

This meant statins might be useful in treating patients who had blockages resulting in damaged tissue.

They might also help in gene-therapy treatments aimed at helping patients grow their own bypasses, Dr Walsh's team wrote in the journal Nature Medicine.

The researchers tested simvastatin, made by Merck & Co under the name Zocor. Tests suggested that pravastatin, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb under the name Pravachol, might work in the same way.

"It's probably a class effect," says Dr Michael Simons, an expert in angiogenesis at Harvard University.

Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels.

Drugs that fight this process are being tested against cancer, but the process can be stimulated to help people with heart disease.

Gene-therapy that uses a protein to promote blood vessel growth has been shown in experiments to help a few heart patients.

Statins interfere with the liver's production of cholesterol, helping prevent heart disease and strokes by stopping buildup of fatty artery blockages.

But they also prevent heart disease in patients who have normal cholesterol. Doctors are mystified as to why.

Dr Walsh's team tested rabbits, cutting off a major femoral artery and then giving the rabbits simvastatin.

They grew new blood vessels to replace the cut-off artery.

The team say the drugs might help ischaemic heart disease patients grow new blood vessels.

- REUTERS