Physician Lawrence Broxmeyer, MD Investigates Link Between Infection and Heart Disease

Ever wonder if an actual disease is behind heart disease? A recently published peer-reviewed article: Heart Disease: The Greatest "Risk" Factor Of Them All.(http://drbroxmeyer.netfirms.com/) by internist/ researcher Lawrence Broxmeyer, MD points to a specific infectious disease behind heart disease and the reasons why.

Dr. Lawrence Broxmeyer MD points out that "by the turn of the last century, flying in the face of over a hundred years of research and clinical observation to the contrary, medicine abandoned the link between infection and atherogenesis, the formation of atherosclerotic plaque in cardiac vessels; not because it was ever proven wrong, but because it did not fit in with the trends of a medical establishment convinced that chronic disease such as heart disease must be multi-factorial, degenerative and non-infectious."

Yet it was, says Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, "the very inability of 'established' risk factors such as hypercholesterolemia, hypertension and smoking to completely explain the incidence and trends in cardiovascular disease that has resulted in historically repeated calls to search out an infectious cause, a search that began more than a century ago."

Today, Lawrence Broxmeyer MD points out, half of US heart attack victims have acceptable cholesterol levels and 25% or more have none of the "risk factors" associated with heart disease, including smoking, high blood pressure or obesity, most of which are not inconsistent with being caused by infection.

"Even the case of the traditionalist's latest 2003 JAMA assault to 'debunk' what they call the "50% risk factor myth" falls woefully short under scrutiny. In one group 30% died of heart disease with a cholesterol of at least 240 mg/dl, a condition which also existed in 21% who did not die during the same period. And the overlap was obvious throughout the so-called risk categories. Under such scrutiny, Lawrence Broxmeyer MD said, "the studies lead investigator conceded that if obesity, inactivity and elevated cholesterol in the elderly are included, just about everyone has a risk factor and he likened the dilemma of people who do or do not wind up with heart disease akin to the susceptibility of people who are exposed to tuberculosis but do not get the disease."

In Infections and Atherosclerosis: New Clues from an old Hypothesis? Nieto stressed the need to extend the infectious agents beyond the three infections which have in recent years been the focus of research: Cytomegalovirus (CMV), Chlamydia pneumoniae, and Helicobactor pylori.

Mycobacterial disease shares interesting connections to heart disease according to Dr. Lawrence Broxmeyer, MD. "Not only is tuberculosis the only microorganism to depend on cholesterol to infect the human immune system but CDC maps for cardiovascular disease bear a striking similarity to those of State and regional TB case rates."

"Ellis, Hektoen, Osler, McCallum, Swartz, Livingston and Alexander-Jackson all saw clinical and laboratory evidence of a causative relationship between the mycobacteria and heart disease" relates Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, and Xu actually showed that proteins of mycobacterium such as tuberculosis actually led to experimental atherosclerosis in laboratory animals, not once but several times."

Furthermore, says Broxmeyer, present day markers suggested as indicators for heart disease susceptibility such as C-Reactive Protein (CRP), interleukin-6 and homocysteine are all similarly elevated in tuberculosis.

It therefore behooves researchers, says Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, to explore the link between heart disease and typical and atypical tuberculosis.

Additional information about Lawrence Broxmeyer MD and his on-going research can be found at http://drbroxmeyer.netfirms.com/ Dr. Broxmeyer can also be contacted by phone at (718) 746-5793.



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