Protein May Provide Relief From Heart Disease Symptoms
Nov. 12, 2000 (New Orleans) -- A naturally occurring protein that causes new vessels to grow may offer relief from the debilitating symptoms of heart disease by increasing blood flow to damaged tissues. A year after treatment with vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, patients had significantly less chest pain (angina) and were able to exercise much longer than those given a placebo. New work in animals shows that the effect may be even more dramatic when VEGF is combined with other cutting-edge therapies.
Not only do the studies show that VEGF works, they should help allay some of the fears surrounding angiogenesis -- the technical term for new blood vessel growth. "There's been concern about potential side effects -- both of cancer and of whether, by growing new vessels, you could in fact [cause blockages in the existing vessels]," says lead study investigator Timothy D. Henry, MD, who presented his findings here Sunday at a meeting of the American Heart Association. "But there was no evidence of this. What we found was important for the whole field." Henry is director of interventional cardiology at Hennepin County Medical Center and professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Henry and his colleagues compared VEGF protein and placebo for treating severe heart disease. Nearly 200 patients were randomly assigned to receive low-dose VEGF, high-dose VEGF, or placebo. Two months later, patients in all three groups had significant improvements in chest pain, quality of life, and the length of time they were able to exercise. By four months, the VEGF patients had surpassed the placebo group.
"At one year, the placebo effect was gone," says Henry, and patients in the placebo group were back to where they started. "On the other hand, the low-dose VEGF group still showed some improvement, and high-dose patients continued to have significant improvement in chest pain, such that 40% of those patients had either no or very little angina."
What's more, he says, "four of the placebo group patients had developed cancer, compared to only one in the low-dose and none in the high-dose VEGF groups."