Maurizio Trevisan, Dean of the School of Public Health and Health Professions, is the senior author of a ten-year longitudinal study conducted in Apulia, Italy that may assist the medical community in preventing heart attacks.
The study aimed to discover if glycated LDL (low density lipoprotein), a type of cholesterol with sugar bonded to it, plays a role in heart attack risk. About 5,632 Italians from southern Italy over the age of 50 participated in the study, and their diet was monitored periodically over a ten-year period to see if the levels of glycated LDL in their bloodstream increased the risk of a heart attack.
Trevisan believes that blood sugar could play a bigger role in heart attack risk than originally thought. If blood sugar is kept to a reasonable level, then the risk of a heart attack could be decreased, because less sugar would be available to bond with glycated LDL cholesterol.
These findings may have special significance for the diabetic population because this group tends to have a higher risk for a heart attack than non-diabetics.
"The next step for me is to replicate the information in another population," Trevisan said. "We may use another group of people that is slightly younger than the group we used for the past study."
He would like to use another sample group from somewhere else in Europe to help solidify his findings.
Trevisan, who is from Italy, conducted the study at a clinical laboratory in southern Italy through the Italian National Health Service. The Italians were perfect subjects because their high fat Mediterranean diet places them at a high risk for heart attack.
The study was a nested control study, one group had cardiovascular disease and the other did not, eliminating the need for further tests.
"(A nested control study) is more powerful because we had people who we knew were healthy and people who weren't," Trevisan said.
The individuals without cardiovascular disease, 4,452 of the subjects, were further broken into groups of diabetics and non-diabetics. Within the first five years, 103 of the non-cardiovascular diseased subjects experienced a heart attack, 56 of which were fatal.
Glycated LDL can pose a problem because the body's cells cannot burn LDL very well when it has been glycated. As a result, more LDL builds up in the bloodstream and can increase the risk of a heart attack.
Trevisan and his colleagues were not able to discover why or how glycation occurs, but they believe a possible solution is to keep blood glucose low so that less LDL is glycated and builds up in the bloodstream.
"In research, you have a question and try to answer it, but there's always another study needed in order to build on the new information and discoveries, this is so you can come to a more complete and meaningful solution," Trevisan said.
While Trevisan acted as a representative of UB during the study, UB did not provide any additional funding. He did note that an Italian Ph.D. student was inspired to come to UB to study as a result of the study, and believes that this and other studies will help UB's overall reputation within the academic community worldwide.
Trevisan believes UB's epidemiology department is highly respected on a national and global level, partly due to his own research. If UB researchers continue to conduct research overseas, the university's reputation could reap its own benefits.
"It shows that we are forward thinking," he said.
On the horizon in his glycation research is the possibility that glycation is a factor in other conditions aside from heart attack risk.
"We're continuing to look at cardiovascular disease," Trevisan said. "There are also studies we are looking at to see if glycated lipids can contribute to other chronic conditions, such as colon cancer."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
