Heart Advances

Progress reports in the war on heart disease, presented to last week's annual meeting of the American Heart Association in Chicago:

P: A new and potent drug, chlorothiazide (trade-named Diuril by manufacturers Merck Sharp & Dohme, though not yet released for general prescription use), taken by mouth, can be highly effective as a diuretic, stimulating the body to get rid of excess water, which causes edema (dropsy) in patients with enlarged and failing hearts. Columbia University's Dr. John H. Laragh and Dr. Felix E. Demartini reported that chlorothiazide works well by itself, also increases the effectiveness of other diuretics when given in small-dose combinations. In three cases where no drug worked alone, a combination did the trick. The A.H.A.'s new president. Dr. Robert W. Wilkins of Boston University, and other researchers credited chlorothiazide with a second valuable and unexpected property: it reduces blood pressure. So far, no distressing side effects have been noted.

P: Radioactive evidence underlined the hotly debated importance of fats in the diet of patients with coronary atherosclerosis (narrowing of the heart's arteries by fatty deposits). A Philadelphia team headed by Dr. William Likoff fed volunteers a test meal containing radioactive fat. In normal subjects the fat concentration in the blood reached its peak in six hours, almost disappeared in 24 hours. In subjects with high blood levels of cholesterol, or with coronary disease, or with both, the fat reached a higher concentration in the blood, and much more of it remained there 24 hours later. The researchers' conclusion: such patients have a biochemical abnormality that keeps their systems from using fats properly.

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