STUDY FINDS ANGIOPLASTY CAN FAIL BECAUSE OF A COMMON VIRUS
Doctors have found that artery-clearing angioplasty frequently fails to work in people who carry a common virus known as cytomegalovirus, or CMV. A study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the risk of angioplasty failure is five times higher than usual if people are infected with CMV.
In angioplasty, doctors thread tiny balloons into arteries that feed the heart and briefly inflate them. When all goes well, the clogged arteries are permanently squeezed open.
But in about a third of cases, the arteries close again, often because muscle cells grow rapidly to fill the opening. There have been few clues about why this happens to some but not others.
Dr. Stephen Epstein, chief of cardiology at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md., was a co-author of the study, conducted largely by Dr. Yi Fu Zhou.
Epstein believes the virus turns off a crucial gene, called p53, that regulates cell growth. This allows the smooth muscle cells that line the blood vessels to grow out of control.
