They say the discovery, reported in Journal of the American College of Cardiology, goes a long way to explain why people who are overweight generally have higher levels of the molecule, known as C-reactive protein (CRP), which is now used diagnostically to predict future cardiovascular events.
And they also report some good news: the researchers found that aspirin and statin drugs, now commonly used to treat heart diseases, effectively damp down production of CRP from fat cells.
"This study is the first to show how body fat participates in the inflammatory process that leads to cardiovascular disease, but also demonstrates that this process can be blocked by drugs now on the market," said study leader Edward T. H. Yeh, M.D., who is both chairman of the Department of Cardiology at M. D. Anderson and director of the Research Center for Cardiovascular Disease at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases at the UT Health Science Center at Houston.
UT Health Science Center at Houston President James T. Willerson, M.D., is a co-author of the study.
Adipose tissue (body fat) has been lately regarded as a separate body organ which can produce a number of different biologically active molecules - such as cytokine proteins that are associated with inflammation, and the hormone resistin, which is linked to insulin resistance and the development of type two diabetes.
Even if they are healthy, people with more adipose tissue also tend to have higher levels of CRP. Previous research, however, had only found CRP to be produced in liver tissue, although Yeh, Willerson and Paolo Calabro, M.D., discov
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16-Sep-2005