@Drnaline,
I hope you are recovering nicely! One doesn't learn anything if not challenged, so it is nice to have you around.
On the subject of heart disease, they are in the process of breeching a revolutionary treatment. It will hopefully completely cure heart disease in the near future.
In the early 1980's an elderly Italian man came down from his mountain village to see a local town docter. This doctor was associated with the university of Milan. The elderly man was not seeing the doctor for heart problems. How ever in the course of a blood work up, the doctor saw that the elderly mans cholesteral was through the roof. The doctor was convinced by the blood tests that the elderly man must have rampant heart disease, and so he orded tests. What he found was mystifing. The elderly mans arteries were clear. There was no build up what so ever of any plaque or anything. They ran multiple tests , but the reason for the lack of heart disease was beyond the current technologies of the time to detect. The elderly mans relatives were also tested and all were found to have the same amazingly clear arteries in spite of high cholesteral and other heart disease factors.
Fast forward to 2005, The human genome project, gene therapy, revoltionary mapping of DNA etc... now the technology has caught up and the italian doctors and University of Milan have taken another crack at it. It turns out that everyone in that elderly mans family that is descended from a man born in 1790, has the same genetic mutation. The mutation produces a form of cholesteral that does not cause build up of plaque but in turn strips it away from the arteries. They have successfully bio-engineered a artificial form of the mutant cholesteral and have tested it on rats with amazing results. Rats engineered to have heart disease and all the symptoms of it, given gene therapy with the mutant form of the cholesteral have shown that not only does it stop heart disease but it reverses it. Human trials have proven just as successful, with no known side effects. The body recognizes the mutant cholesteral as just cholesteral, thus no side effects. There are articles all over the news about it. Just do a search. It's amazing.
