Drug-coated stent keeps arteries clear

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Little mesh tubes called stents are helping keep the arteries of heart patients unclogged, but coating them with an anti-rejection drug seems to make them work even better, researchers reported Tuesday.

They said stents coated with sirolimus, made by American Home Products subsidiary Wyeth-Ayerst under the name Rapamune, helped prevent arteries from clogging again.

"This approach is fast, easy and predictable without major side-effects," Dr. Eduardo Sousa of the Institute Dante Pazzanese of Cardiology in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Interventional cardiologists are implanting stents every day."

People with clogged arteries can be treated with heart bypasses, or with less drastic measures such as angioplasty, in which the blocked-up artery is stretched open. Inserting a stent can help it stay open, but the traumatized cells of the artery often grow back so heavily that they re-clog it.

This is called restenosis.

"Many approaches to reduce restenosis have failed, but we believed delivering medication directly to the site of artery damage would be a rational approach," Sousa said.

"We focused on stents because they act as permanent scaffolding within the artery."

His team tested 30 patients given stents for chest pain, giving them either fast-release or slow-release Rapamune on their stents.

Using X-rays known as angiograms and three-dimensional ultrasound tests, the researchers found that after four months there was minimal restenosis in both groups.

"Most of the inner artery growth was limited to 10 percent along the entire length of the stent. That's too low to cause any re-narrowing," Sousa, whose findings are reported in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, said.

None of the patients had died, suffered a heart attack, developed blood clots or needed repeat procedures.

The FDA-approved Rapamune for fighting rejection in kidney transplant patients in September 1999.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Circulation - American Heart Association
FDA - Rapamune Consumer Information
Rapamune for the Prevention of Acute Kidney Rejection

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