Scientists presented two studies on Tuesday at the American Heart Association meeting in Los Angeles which suggested that genetically altered tomatoes can help fight heart diseases.
Two studies presented the American Heart Association meeting in Los Angeles suggested that Cholesterol infusion can help prevent heart attack while genetically altered tomatoes can help fight heart diseases.
CSL chief scientist, Dr. Andrew Cuthbertson, said the infusion of proteins with cholesterol increases "reverse cholesterol transport", which removes negative cholesterol from the body through the liver.
"The way it does that is to suck the cholesterol out of those plaques in the walls in the arteries and calm them down and make them much less likely to burst and cause a second heart attack," Dr. Cuthbertson told AAP. "It shifts cholesterol out of plaques and back through the liver where you get rid of it."
He said the study's results were "very encouraging so far."
"The increase in reverse cholesterol transport is many, many fold higher following an infusion of this new drug," Dr. Cuthbertson said. "Around the world many thousands of people have second heart attacks and die, so we're trying to provide a treatment that doesn't exist today."
In another study pieces of genetically altered tomatoes were fed to mice and it was found that these tomatoes were very efficient in fighting heart diseases.
"As good as statins are, they haven't completely reduced the number of people still dying of heart attack and stroke and those numbers are still quite significant," said Alan Fogelman, the lead author on the tomato study and a cardiology researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles
The study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Through the study, scientists found that the mice displayed reduced plaque and higher HDL. When the study was conducted on 27 people, it was found that the yogurt bacteria helped cut total cholesterol by 9.1 percent.
