Inflammation drugs help arteries too

Anti-inflammatory drugs used to treat arthritis may also reduce the risk of heart disease by keeping the arteries limber, Swiss researchers say.

Their findings add to a growing body of research that suggests inflammation plays an important role in heart disease - perhaps as important as a fatty diet.

Still under debate is what causes the inflammation - an infection of some sort, or perhaps the way the body deals with too much fat in the blood. But drugs designed to reduce inflammation seem to help against heart disease.

Frank Ruschitzka, a cardiologist at University Hospital in Zurich, tested 14 of his patients by giving all of them their standard lipid-lowering drugs, blood-thinning aspirin and other medications. For two weeks, half got Celebrex - a member of a new class of drugs called COX-2 inhibitors - on top of everything else and half got a dummy pill. Then he swapped the two groups.

COX-2 inhibitors work in the same way as drugs such as aspirin, but supposedly without some of the side-effects such as stomach bleeding.

It would take years to tell whether taking COX-2 inhibitors reduced the risk of heart disease, so Dr Ruschitzka and colleagues instead measured markers of heart disease, such as blood-vessel efficiency and levels of the fat that blocks arteries.

All three improved while the patients were on COX-2 inhibitors, the researchers report in the journal Circulation.

"The increase which we have seen is well within the range of what we have seen in other cardiovascular medications such as statins and ACE inhibitors," Dr Ruschitzka said.

"There are only a few drugs out there that improve endothelial function. This is not a small increase."

Dr Ruschitzka, who said his research was not paid for or directed by any drug company, said more and bigger studies needed to be done before heart patients were advised to add anti-inflammatory drugs to their regimens.

"What we clearly see is that atherosclerosis [hardening and clogging of the arteries] is an inflammatory disease," he said. "It is caused not only by the deposition of cholesterol stuff. There is inflammation going on."

Studies on whether the inflammation is caused by infection of some sort have been inconclusive.

"Inflammation and infection may be two different stories. Inflammation may be caused by non-infectious agents," Dr Ruschitzka said.

For instance, immune cells often try to pull particles of fat out of the blood. They engulf the particles, becoming what are known as foam cells, and sometimes get caught in blood-vessel walls. This process can cause inflammation.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: Health