New drug lowers markers of heart attack risk

For people with a genetic makeup that puts them at risk for having a Heart attack , treatment with an experiment drug can suppress biomarkers associated with the increased risk, results of an early trial suggest.

The authors of a report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association explain that variants in the gene for a protein called FLAP have been linked to a heightened risk of Heart attack . Therefore, treatment with a FLAP inhibitor could benefit people with these variants.

An experimental drug DG-031 is a FLAP inhibitor that has been shown to be safe and well tolerated in clinical trials for treating asthma. Dr. Hakon Hakonarson, from Decode Genetics, Inc. in Reykjavik, Iceland, and colleagues tested the effect of DG-031's on heart attack risk markers in 191 people with the risky FLAP gene variants.

Compared with an inactive placebo, DG-031 significantly reduced levels of two heart risk biomarkers, leukotriene B4 and C-reactive protein.

As in previous trials, DG-031 was well tolerated and not linked to any serious side effects, the investigators found.

They're hopeful that the drop in biomarker levels will translate into a reduction in heart attack risk.

"To put these results in a historical context," they write, "we believe the promise of the beneficial role of DG-031 in cardiovascular disease may, at least in part, reflect that of statins in the late 1980s when it had been shown that they could lower LDL cholesterol but it had not been shown that lowering LDL cholesterol leads to decrease in the risk of MI."

In a related editorial, Dr. Christopher J. O'Donnell, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, comments that the trial "provides an exciting attempt to translate genetic findings to clinical applications."

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association, May 11, 2005.