At the beginning of the new year, if you pay attention to different news platforms, you will see some regrettable and sad news. For example, on the first day of the new year, a self-media platform broke out that a 24-year-old boy in Jiangsu Province suddenly died of a heart attack while working out in the gym. Behind these sad events, the cause of many of these patients is actually a disease called "refractory hypercholesterolemia", and today Dr. Zhang will talk about this kind of disease that is not uncommon, but it is fatal enough.
Recently, Dr. Zhang has focused on popularizing a type of disease that can easily lead to myocardial infarction in people at a young age, that is, "familial hypercholesterolemia". Speaking of which, many friends are not particularly clear about what is "familial hypercholesterolemia". In fact, simply put, "familial hypercholesterolemia" is because of abnormalities in certain genes that affect blood lipid metabolism, resulting in abnormal elevation of LDL. This disease can greatly increase the probability of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in the human body, especially coronary heart disease, especially so that many people have myocardial infarction at a young age. Therefore, for many people who have a heart attack at a young age, doctors should pay special attention to checking whether the patient has familial hypercholesterolemia.
But, you know what? In patients with familial hypercholesterolemia, there is another type of condition that is more serious, that is, "refractory hypercholesterolemia". This group of patients generally refers to homozygotic hypercholesterolemia and complex heterozygous hypercholesterolemia. The reason why these two familial hypercholesterolemias are called "refractory hypercholesterolemia" is that often this kind of human LDL is particularly high, and treatment is very difficult, and existing drugs sometimes have difficulty controlling abnormally elevated LDL.
For example, the existing lipid-lowering drugs are more familiar with statin lipid-lowering drugs, ezez-maibu, these two oral lipid-lowering drugs, plus the injectable lipid-lowering drugs "PCSK9 inhibitors" that everyone has become familiar with in the past two years, these drugs should be said to be relatively easy to use in general hyperlipidemia patients, and after use, blood lipids can be reduced, but it is not so good for patients with refractory hypercholesterolemia. This is why the disease is called "refractory hypercholesterolemia".
However, modern medicine for this very harmful refractory hypercholesterolemia, is also trying to study new treatment methods, whether it is at the drug level or new drug research and development, or gene therapy at the gene level, is to achieve a new breakthrough in the treatment of this disease through some treatment methods. I hope that in the near future, we will be able to bring us more good news so that those who are deeply troubled by this disease can regain their lives.
Looking forward to better gene therapies to solve the problem