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There's good news on the cholesterol front, which is only fitting since September is Cholesterol Awareness Month. A new study has found that many more people than previously thought, including women and the elderly, can benefit from cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins. The study of 20,000 adults, conducted at Oxford University in England and presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions in Anaheim, California, in June 2002, concluded that statins can help people with diabetes, plaque buildup or a history of heart disease--no matter how low their cholesterol.

On the alternative-medicine front, researchers have found that a tree extract Hindu healers have used for 3,000 years has been found to help reduce cholesterol. A favorite of Ayurvedic practitioners, the extract, called guglipid, comes from the guggal, a small tree that grows in India. Although guglipid has been authorized for use by medical doctors in India since 1987, there has been little scientific support for its use in traditional Western medicine. Now researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, whose findings are published in the April 2, 2002 issue of Science, say the extract blocks a key receptor in the body that manages the process by which cholesterol is converted to bile. When this conversion takes place too quickly, the body is unable to rid itself of cholesterol, which builds up, increasing the risks of heart disease.

"Scientists in the United States are only starting to look at [guglipid] now," says Kanu Patel, who practices Ayurvedic medicine in England, to the BBC, "but we have known this for years."

# posted by Medical Information : 1:57 AM