2 Drugs Are Aid to Heart - November 1987

The success of two drugs in preventing and treating heart attacks were announced in November. Dr. Basil Rifkind, a researched at the Lipid Research Clinics of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, MD, said November 11, that the drug gemfibrozil changed the type of blood in ways that reduced coronary ehart diseases. He said the drug lowered cholesterol only sighted but its significance was in raising the level of low-density lipoproteins ("good cholesterol") and lowering the level of low-density lipoproteins ("bad cholesterol"). The health community, however, had viewed such a drug only as a last resort if diet, exercise, and weight loss failed to achieve desired cholesterol levels. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced, November 12, that it had cleared Genentech Inc. to begin marketing TPA, or tissue plasminogen activator, a genetically engineered blood clot disorder, that would be used to treat heart attack patients. It had been found effective in dissolving blood clots and reducing the incidence of congestive heart failure after an attack. Causing bleeding was its most serious side effect.