When you hear "clogged arteries," you probably think of angioplasty or bypass surgery. Now a team of Stanford scientists may have a less invasive treatment for this major cause of heart attacks and strokes. A light-activated drug -- normally used on cancer patients -- shows promise in partially dissolving fatty deposits.
The drug, lutetium texaphyrin, kills cells that have absorbed it after they are exposed to light. Assistant professors Mahmood Razavi and Stanley Rockson tested it on 16 patients with blocked leg arteries. They injected the drug, waited a day, then used an optical fiber about the diameter of a toothpick to shine bright red light directly on the arteries for 15 minutes.
Four weeks later, X-rays showed that plaque deposits had shrunk between 10 percent and 74 percent in three-quarters of the patients, according to results Razavi presented at a medical conference in Orlando, Fla. in March.
Light treatment is much less invasive than angioplasty, in which a balloon inflated inside the clogged vessel compresses the plaque and opens a channel for blood flow. "One of the beauties of this technique is it's not hazardous," Rockson says. "There is not trauma to the blood vessels."
It also may be longer lasting. With angioplasty, a patient's vessels often narrow again as scar tissue builds up. Early studies suggest that the light treatment may prevent this accumulation of scar tissue.
Razavi, Rockson and their colleagues plan to conduct a trial, starting in July, of the technique on coronary arteries.
