Weill Cornell event stresses the role of metabolic syndrome in heart disease

Gotto

By David Lane

A group of heart disease risk factors known as the "metabolic syndrome" were discussed at an international conference in New York City July 10-13 that was opened by Antonio M. Gotto Jr., dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and one of the world's foremost experts on cardiovascular disease.

Speakers at the conference, the International Symposium on Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, and Cardiovascular Disease, indicated that it might not be enough simply to reduce LDL cholesterol (or "bad cholesterol") in the effort to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. About half of the heart attacks each year strike people with low to normal cholesterol. Thus, factors other than high cholesterol must also contribute to heart disease risk.

One theory points to the metabolic syndrome, a constellation of risk factors comprising abdominal obesity, elevated triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol (the "good cholesterol"), elevated blood pressure and elevated glucose levels, among other factors.

Gotto, co-chair of the symposium, which was sponsored by institutions including Weill Cornell, described the event as "very timely, as this field has grown and changed significantly within the past few years, with the promise of new pharmacological treatment and combined therapies." He has been involved in major studies leading to advances in the prevention and treatment of heart disease. In one, researchers found that certain apolipoproteins, the major structural components of lipoproteins, could be more important than LDL cholesterol as risk factors.

Together with research into triglycerides and the metabolic syndrome, these findings could eventually lead to the development of new treatments that can reduce the number of heart attacks each year. Gotto opened the program with a discussion of the evolution of triglycerides as a coronary risk factor, including whether high triglycerides alone can increase a person's risk for heart disease. Although there is controversy among experts about whether triglycerides are an independent risk factor, elevated triglycerides are often found in association with conditions, such as the metabolic syndrome, that increase cardiovascular risk.