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Clean-up mess
A common bacterium has been found in the plaque that builds up in the coronary arteries, and infection with it may be linked to cardiovascular illness.
With that in mind, researchers suspected that giving heart patients an antibiotic to knock out the bacterium might reduce their risk of more cardiac problems. But the drugs do not seem to help at all, two new studies in The New England Journal of Medicine report.
"The testing of these agents for the treatment of advanced coronary heart disease appears to be at the end of the road," concluded an editorial in the journal by Dr. Jeffrey L. Anderson of the University of Utah School of Medicine. Still, infection's role in heart disease remains an issue.
In one study, about 4,000 men and women were given either a once-a-week antibiotic or a placebo for a year, and then were followed up for an average of almost four years.
All the participants had stable coronary artery disease after having various problems or procedures.
The study found that those who had been given the drug suffered the same number of new heart problems as those who did not.
The second study also looked at about 4,000 patients, but used a different drug for two weeks and then for 10 days a month over about two years.
It, too, found no difference between those people given the drug and those given a placebo. Dr. J. Thomas Grayston of the University of Washington and Dr. Christopher P. Cannon of Harvard led the studies.
New York Times
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