New drug may help increase good cholesterol, decrease triglycerides
Heart patients living on a budget can cheaply lower their cholesterol if they buy Canadian Lipitor at a fraction of what it costs in the U.S.
Heart patients living on a budget can cheaply lower their cholesterol if they buy Canadian Lipitor at a fraction of what it costs in the U.S. Scientific research continues to find different strategies to tackling cardiovascular disease. New research led by the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found a way to increase one's levels of "good" cholesterol in order to support heart health.
HDL, also known as good cholesterol, helps remove LDL, or bad cholesterol, from the blood vessels. A team of scientists searched for a way to help boost people's levels of HDL. Previous research experimented on a drug that targets miR-33, which belongs to a class of molecules that regulates gene expression known as microRNAs. Specifically, miR-33 decreases levels of HDL. Past studies showed that the drug, anti-miR-33, helped increase levels of good cholesterol and promote the removal of LDL from the blood vessels of mice. The scientists conducted a new experiment on non-human primates to verify this effect.
The new results showed not only that anti-miR-33 boosted HDL levels by 50 percent, but that it also decreased levels of fatty triglycerides flowing in the blood by up to half, as published in the journal Nature.
This drug can be used to enhance the efficacy of cholesterol-lowering statins, said the scientists, who added that further research is needed before the drug moves to human trials.
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