Effects of Etofibrate on Risk Factors of Atherosclerosis

Abstract

For some time now the concept of the multifactorial genesis of atherosclerosis has been well accepted. Originally, it was based on the results of large epidemiological studies, which showed a powerful correlation between certain habits of life or metabolic or pathophysiological states, on the one hand, and the probability of contracting an atherosclerotic disease, on the other. The parameters of prognostic value were called risk factors. The 18-year follow-up of the Framingham study confirmed, among other factors; that serum cholesterol is a risk factor in the development of cardiovascular disease. In addition, different risk factors, when present at the same time, potentiate each other to an enormous risk. The coronary risk increases overproportionately with the blood cholesterol level, growing to a life-threatening danger in patients with familial homozygous hypercholesterolemia. An evaluation of the data of the Pooling Project by means of the Framingham HDL-risk-multipliers shows the incidence of fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction to decrease in men at any concentration of total cholesterol by a factor of 2.5 as HDL-cholesterol increases from less than 40 mg dl^-1 to more than 50 mg dl^-1. For this reason the atherogenic index LDL-cholesterol/HDL-cholesterol beats the concentration of total cholesterol in estimating the coronary risk. Hyperlipoproteinemia is not only correlated with coronary vascular disease, but also with peripheral arterial acclusion disease (PAOD). In a group of patients with symptomatic PAOD, hyperlipoproteinemia was found in 76% of the patients, which was twice as much as in subjects without PAOD.