study's findings "allow us to propose that stabilization of these plaques is a possibility," he said. This supports "the paradigm of prevention rather than treatment of a coronary event," said Petrov. The study "demonstrates that a decrease in apoptosis was associated with behavioral and therapeutic interventions--diet modification and use of statins--known to improve outcomes in coronary artery disease," he said. "Given that apoptosis contributes to plaque vulnerability, manipulation of apoptosis in atherosclerotic plaques may be of value in treating patients," said Petrov. "Our studies offer a proof of concept for commonly employed strategies for the primary and secondary prevention of coronary events," he added. Additional work needs to be done in developing techniques to combine morphologic and functional imaging about plaques for them to become clinically applicable, said Petrov. He noted that this experimental study is a step toward demonstrating the virtues of molecular imaging.
The investigation was performed in the research laboratories of Jagat Narula, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and chief of the division of cardiology at the University of California, Irvine. Besides Petrov and Narula, authors of "Resolution of Apoptosis in Atherosclerotic Plaque by Dietary Modification and Statin Therapy" include Dagmar Hartung, M.D., School of Medicine Hannover, Hannover, Germany, and division of cardiology, University of California at Irvine; Masayoshi Sarai, M.D., Navneet Narula, M.D., and Johan Verjans, M.D., all with the division of cardiology at the University of California at Irvine; Frank Kolodgie, Ph.D., and Renu Virmani, M.D., both Cardiovascular Pathology, Gaithersburg, Md.; and Chris Reutelingsperger, Ph.D., and Leo Hofstra, M.D., Ph.D., with the University Hospital Maastricht, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
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Contact: Maryann Verrillo
mverrillo@snm.org
703-708-9000
Society of Nuclear Medicine
21-Dec-2005
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