An innovative therapy against excess cholesterol allows you to reduce values by half with just two doses per year: it is a new mRNA drug, whose effectiveness and safety have been tested by an Italian study. Leading the research is Professor Pasquale Perrone Filardi, president of the Italian Society of Cardiology. Looking at the results that have emerged so far, the drug has demonstrated its effectiveness “in two thirds of patients”.
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The new drug
The innovative drug would be injected via two subcutaneous injections, which would allow a 50% reduction in LDL cholesterol (the so-called “bad” cholesterol). The results of this preliminary phase of research were presented today – 14 December – on the occasion of the 84th National Congress of the Italian Society of Cardiology.
In short, the new molecule is capable of “turning off” the mRNA that carries useful information to the PCSK9 protein, involved in the transport and destruction of the receptors that capture cholesterol. «The patients enrolled showed an average reduction in cholesterol levels of 55% which remained stable until the last observation at 10 months», explains Professor Filardi. «If this therapy is given in addition to conventional oral therapies – he adds – about two thirds of patients high cardiovascular risk manage to reach the target established by the current guidelines, i.e. an LDL cholesterol lower than 55mg/dl”.
Heart attacks and deaths: the situation in Italy
The data show that every year in Italy there are as many as 50 thousand patients hospitalized for a second heart attack and it is they who are at the greatest risk, because 1 in 5 dies within a year. «The patients enrolled, at the time of the first anti-PCSK9 prescription, had LDL cholesterol values on average of 137 mg/dl, reaching 45 mg/dl after just over a month, a value that remained stable until the last check-up », explains Professor Perrone Filardi.
«Two-thirds of the patients – adds Gianfranco Sinagra, director of the Asugi cardiothoracic-vascular department and University of Trieste – presented an average reduction in the cholesterol level of 69% after just 37 days from the start of therapy” Value, explains the expert, “which remained constant for all 11 months of follow-up, with a record adherence of over 90%, explainable by the low quantity of side effects”. The importance of the early use of these drugs mainly concerned the substantial reduction of subsequent cardiovascular problems.
«It is necessary to intervene immediately, overcoming the concept of step therapy which slows down and jeopardizes the achievement of therapeutic targets», concludes Perrone Filardi.
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