Question: thank you! your answer has done the opposite of boring me, its incredibly interesting!!!! i was hoping if you could tell me what your topic has to do with drugs? and if this cure will involve an operation or injection or daily medication. which line is most helpful? i am just guessing but would it be injection or daily medication? i know things are currently done to help,as my grandpa died of this genetic illness recently, such as regular blood checks. what else can be done?

Anita Thomas answered on 27 Jun 2014:

Glad to hear from you again magic midget! and glad to think that you’re not bored either!

It’s hard to know where to start to answer you questions! The trouble is that I’m working on so many different projects (but all related to curing atherosclerosis/stroke/heart attack etc).

So, I’ll stick to the one that I put onto my Meet the Scientists page. The project there is use a combination of antibodies, drugs (3 different ones) and nanoparticles as a single treatment – a single injection – just after surgery to treat a blocked artery. Did I mention that it was complex? The surgery you may already heard of – angioplasty, stent insertion, vein graft (CABG) – ring any bells? Anyway, after the surgery there is a pretty good likelyhood of the artery or vein rapidly re-closing (this is called restenosis (stenosis = blockage)) – within 6-12 months. I’ve caged the drugs (I’ve tried 3 different ones so far, comparing them) inside the nanoparticle, and then attached the drug-nanoparticle to an antibody. This is a special antibody that ‘targets’ the site of surgery (eg angioplasty etc) and doesn’t go anywhere else. So, the drugs get to be concentrated where they are needed. This means that the patient only needs a single injection – and they are still asleep then anyway. So, no i.v. line, no daily medication – just a single injection. (the really great thing is that the same principle can be used for other diseases eg cancer). Powerfull stuff and I’m incredibly excited by it. But this line of research is not that old, and it will take years until it can be used routinely.

Anyway, getting back to your last question – what else can be done? Well, there are a number of things that we can all do to limit the changes of having a heart attach/stroke/peripheral artery disease (in leg etc)

First of all there are a couple of things that you can’t change – you’ll jsut have to accept them. As you already know, there is a genetic link. If somebody in your family has had angina or a heart attack or a stroke, then you’ll need to be careful.

There are some other things to be aware of
males are more likely to get the diseases earlier than females
people with diabetes are in more danger, as are people with
high blood pressure (hypertension)
a smoking habit
excess weight
high lipid levels (not just total cholesterol levels. We’re better off with high HDL levels, but less of the bad LDL)

There are also other things that can be measured in your blood (like fibrinogen, CRP), but they are more an ‘indicator’ of disease rather than something that you can control by yourself.

I sure hope that this helps answers your questions. I’m really am sorry to hear of your Grandpa’s death. Try to think of the happy times that you had together…………….

best wishes wherever your future leads you,
Anita.