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(Circulation. 2003;108:e9001.)
© 2003 American Heart Association, Inc.

Cardiovascular News

Ruth SoRelle, MPH

Circulation Newswriter

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Rapamycin Slows Heart Transplant Vasculopathy

Treatment with the immune suppressant drug rapamycin appears to slow heart transplant vasculopathy, said researchers from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY, in a report in this week’s issue of the journal Circulation (Circulation. 2003;108:48–53).

The researchers, led by Donna M. Mancini, MD, noted that cardiac transplant vasculopathy is the most common cause of death in patients who have had a heart transplantation and survived possible complications in the immediate posttransplantation period. Because the vasculopathy is considered a proliferative disease, the scientists wanted to determine if the antiproliferative and antimigratory effects of rapamycin would prevent or delay the progression of the disease.

During their annual cardiac catheterizations, 46 patients were randomized to receive treatment with rapamycin (22 patients) versus continued immunosuppression (24 patients). Patients on rapamycin were monitored for an average of 689 days and control patients for 630. Three patients in the rapamycin group reached a final end point. That means that they died, needed a vascularization procedure such as angioplasty or coronary artery bypass grafting, suffered a heart attack, or had a greater than 25% worsening of catheterization score. By contrast, 14 patients in the usual immunosuppression group reached an end point. These results convinced the researchers that rapamycin did indeed slow the progression to proliferative disease in the coronary arteries of this special class of patients.

In an accompanying editorial (Circulation. 2003;108:6–8), Elazer R. Edelman, MD, PhD, of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology at the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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