Mediterranean diet pill to help prevent heart disease?

[Guest guest]

A pill designed to help prevent heart disease by giving users the benefits of

following a Mediterranean diet is being entered into a large number of new

trials after promising early results.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6114816/Mediterranean-diet-pill-to-\

help-prevent-heart-disease.html

 

Published: 9:33AM BST 30 Aug 2009

 

Ateronon is believed to be the world's first compound to provide the natural

heart-protecting antioxidant properties of the Mediterranean diet in a form

which can be reliably absorbed by the human body.

 

The treatment, which is taken as one capsule per day, is being detailed to over

25,000 European heart specialists during the five day European Society of

Cardiology congress in Barcelona.

 

Teams of doctors at Cambridge University in England and Harvard medical school

in America have already embarked on projects to investigate the properties of

the treatment.

 

Further large scale trials involving up to 10,000 patients, are to begin under

the leadership of heart failure specialists in Catania, Italy, later this year.

 

Senior cardiologists in Finland, which has the world's highest rate of heart

disease, are in the process of getting approval for a study in Helsinki, and

other groups at universities in Sweden and North America are also designing

further projects to investigate the effects of the compound in different ethnic

groups.

 

The independent doctors who have embarked on the Ateronon studies hope that

their work will highlight the flaws in a variety of extensive and costly vitamin

and dietary supplement trials for heart disease, all of which have produced

negative results.

 

They believe that the combination of compounds in Ateronon will provide the

breakthrough scientists have been looking for by providing a formulation free

from side-effects.

 

The principal ingredient of Ateronon is lycopene, derived from tomatoes which

are known to be a significant dietary factor in promoting good cardiovascular

health.

 

Until now, it has been impossible to convert large lycopene crystals into

smaller molecules more easily absorbed by humans.

 

Ateronon combines lycopene with a lactose-based milk protein, thus reducing the

size of lycopene molecules and making them easier to absorb.

 

Lycopene is well-known as a powerful antioxidant that is, a substance which

blocks the breakdown of fats in the blood which leads to the release of

cholesterol and low-density lipoproteins, which form fatty deposits on artery

walls.

 

" We know the Mediterranean diet is beneficial in terms of lowering blood

pressure and cholesterol levels, and the key element is tomatoes, " said Ian

Wilkinson, a British Heart Foundation-funded senior lecturer in clinical

pharmacology at Cambridge University.

 

" We are hoping to build on that evidence and show that getting the whole food

into people in higher concentrations might be more effective than just trying to

give people one type of vitamin, or one type of dietary supplement. "

 

Howard Sesso, assistant professor of medicine at the Brigham and Women's

Hospital, which is part of Harvard university in Boston, is leading a year-long

research project involving 200 heart disease patients.

 

Half the patients will be given a dummy placebo pill for half of the trial

period to ensure any identified Ateronon benefit can genuinely be attributed to

the treatment itself.

 

" The early trials so far do seem to show that Ateronon has a lipid-lowering

effect, " Sesso said. " Obviously, we don't have our own research evidence yet,

but we are optimistic about what we might find. "

 

Studies of Ateronon in 150 people with pre-existing heart disease have already

been carried out by Cambridge Theranostics Limited (CTL), the developers of the

compound.

 

CTL, which is a bio-technology spin-off company of Cambridge university, have

shown the treatment can not only halt, but actually reverse the build-up of

fatty deposits on artery walls, within as little as eight weeks.

 

" We are confident that Ateronon will show quite dramatic benefits in patients

with heart and circulatory disorders, and provide a useful adjunct to statins, "

said Dr Gunter Schmidt, the chief executive of CTL.