Article from USA Today
usatoday.com
High skin cholesterol levels linked to heart attacks
By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY
Measuring cholesterol in a person's skin may predict the person's heart attack risk, a study out Sunday suggests.
The evidence, although preliminary, lies in a study of 649 people, about one-third of whom had previously had heart attacks.
People with the highest skin cholesterol levels were more than twice as likely to have had a heart attack than people with the lowest levels, says lead researcher Dennis Sprecher, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
This is the latest in a series of trials of the test, called Cholesterol 1,2,3 by its maker, International Medical Innovations (IMI) of Toronto.
Sprecher also has reported that skin cholesterol levels are much higher in people with several clogged arteries than in people without artery disease.
"The evidence is fairly convincing that skin cholesterol is associated with a history of heart attack and angiographic evidence of severe heart disease," Sprecher says.
He presented the study Sunday at an American Heart Association meeting on blood vessel disease in Salt Lake City.
The test uses a chemical called digitonin, which binds to cholesterol embedded in the skin. IMI has linked digitonin to an enzyme that turns blue moments after coming in contact with cholesterol. The darker the color, the more cholesterol in the skin.
IMI spokesman Andrew Weir notes that the test, if proven effective in larger, planned studies, gives doctors information that blood tests cannot.
Blood tests actually measure molecules called HDL, so-called "good" cholesterol, and its evil twin, LDL. Although HDL and LDL are popularly called cholesterol, they are not. They're actually carrier molecules. HDL ferries cholesterol out of the blood where it can't do any harm; LDL ferries it into the bloodstream where it can clog arteries.
"We measure the actual cholesterol that stays behind in tissues, not the carrier molecules," Weir says.
Sidney Smith, a cardiology professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, says, "We're entering into an era where more advanced testing may be combined with traditional risk factors to identify people who might be candidates for more aggressive therapies. But it will be important to understand how this specific test might (work) in broad patient groups with large differences in age and ethnic backgrounds."
Weir says the company has planned more definitive studies of the tests' effectiveness in larger populations.
The test could be approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration as early as this month. Performed in a medical setting in only three minutes, the test will cost $10 to $15, compared with $70 for blood testing, Weir says. |
