Theories About Hardening Of Arteries

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28742, 13 November 1958, Page 18

Theories About Hardening Of Arteries

LUBECK (West Germany)

Recent discoveries about the composition of the blood give hope of advance in the treatment of some of modern civilisation’s most deadly diseases, including hardening of the arteries. Professor W. Schrade, of Frankfurt Medical University Clinic, told a medical congress here that he had found a significant connexion between certain complaints and the fatty acid content of the blood. He drew only tentative conclusions, and expressly warned his audience against reaching over-simplified conclusions. He described experiments which brought the blood status of ar-terio-sclerosis (hardened arteries) sufferers back to normal by a change in diet from animal to vegetable fats. This could dispose of the popular theory that fatty foods are necessarily dangerous to heart sufferers, and suggests that a comparatively minor change of diet.’ not necessarily to a fat-free one, may help. Professor Schrade reported that he examined 36 patients with arterio-sclcrosis. Most of them were also suffering from resulting damage to the heart muscle. ~He found that their blood had a total fatty acid content averaging 63 per cent, more than that of a group of 20 healthy people. So far. this agreed with the “fatty foods hard arteries” theory. But the fatty acids fell into two categories, known as saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. The unsaturated ones are not produced by the body’s own mechanisms and have to be extracted from food in the same way as vitamins.

Professor Schrade found that there was relatively little of the latter category, the essential fatty acids, in the blood of his sick patients. although the overall fatty acids content was so high. He told the congress that experiments had shown that it was possible to adjust the blood’s fat content by diet. Instead of giving patients a daily 100 grammes of butter, which contain relatively little of the essential acids, he gave . them the same amount of maize, soya and sunflower oil, which contains up to 70 grammes of essential acids

and correspondingly less of the others.

This had an effect similar to that of a fat-free diet as far as the too-plentiful saturated fatty acids were concerned. The same result. Professor Schrade said, could be achieved much more rapidly by injection. When 750 milligrammes of essential acids from soya oil were given this way, the effect, within hours, equalled that obtained by dieting for weeks, reaching its maximum effect in eight hours. “We should like to give express warning against any simplified conclusions to the effect that arterio-sclerosis results from lack of essential fatty acids.” he said. “Rather do we need an attitude taking into consideration the complex character of variations in the blood’s composition. Changes in the essential fatty acids are only partial symptoms. This matter does, however, present important possibilities for treatment, and the essential fatty acids can therefore be of special interest to physicians.” Professor Schrade said that diabetes and liver complaints had a similar effect on the fatty acid content of the blood. At the same congress. Dr. J. Schlief, of the Hamburg Marien Hospital, said that another newlvdiscovered fact about the blood could, in certain circumstances, help to save the lives of victims of heart attacks. He said that blood scrum was found to contain certain ferments which had various chemical tasks to perform. In the first few days after a heart attack, the number of these ferments was increased if part of the heart muscles were permanently injured.

Some heart attack victims, he said, lose their lives prematurely through getting up too soon after the pains have stopped, because their hearts have been permanently and dangerously injured. The ferment test can show whether this had taken place or not. It can also distinguish between this condition and other diseases with similar symptoms', such as lung embolism.