Viagra

For those who have read my endless series of blogs on cardiovascular disease, you may know exactly where I am going at this point.

Some time ago, Pfizer were developing a drug to treat angina. It blocked an enzyme called phosphodiesterase type-5. [Although I believe that its exact mechanism of action was not known at first]. To put it another way, this drug was a phosphodiesterase type-5 inhibitor (PDE5i).

The moment Pfizer found out what enzyme this drug blocked, they tried to patent the pathway that blocked this enzyme. Pharmaceutical companies trying to patent biological pathways. Perhaps I should try to patent the Krebs cycle, and charge everyone on the planet for having such a thing. Kerchingggg!

‘The U.S. patent office appears to have granted Pfizer a patent covering any drug that blocks this enzyme, meaning that it can sue all of its potential competitors.’¹

Luckily, this time they were rebuffed.

Anyhoo, back to the drug. During phase one clinical trials, where humans are given the drug for the first time to see what effects it may have, many of the volunteers were hanging on to their medication, rather than handing them back. This was very unusual. Almost unknown in fact.

When researchers went out to find out why this was happening it was discovered, not quite sure who admitted to this, that sildenafil/Viagra improved erectile function. Thus, Viagra, the first PDE5i, was born. The first drug that worked simply and effectively to improve erectile dysfunction (ED). As for treating angina… that piffling indication was rapidly shelved as the dollar signs appeared in the sky above Pfizer HQ. Sex, as they say, sells.

In truth, it is actually one of the best drugs ever. Not only does is treat ED, but it can also be used by mountaineers to prevent pulmonary oedema (fluid filling up in the lungs), which is one of the major symptoms of altitude sickness. It does this by reducing the blood pressure in the pulmonary vessels (blood vessels in the lungs).

To explain a little further. If you climb very high, and the oxygen level drops, the heart pumps blood harder and harder through the lungs to get as much oxygen as possible into the system. This can result in fluid leaking out of the vessels and into the lung tissue, so they fill up with fluid. At which point you effectively drown, so you die. Viagra stops this happening, by lowering the blood pressure in the lungs.

Unsurprisingly, Viagra is used to treat people who have pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure in the blood vessels in the lungs) at sea level. It is sold under the name Ravatio, for this indication – but we know that it is just Viagra. In addition, Viagra can be used to treat Raynaud’s disease, where the small blood vessels supplying the fingers and toes constrict, leading to painful cold fingers.

So, here we have a drug that can treat angina, pulmonary hypertension, erectile dysfunction and Raynaud’s disease at the same time. Thus, you can have great sex at twenty thousand feet above sea level, not get chest pain, or breathless, and stay warm at the same time. What more could a man ask for?

How does it do all these things? The answer is that it increases Nitric Oxide (NO) synthesis in endothelial cells. When it does this in the penis, it stimulates erections. In the heart, it opens up coronary arteries. In the lungs, it dilates the blood vessels, in fingers and toes it opens up arteries. So, all of the many different effects, are all due to exactly the same process – increased NO synthesis. Viagra also lowers blood pressure – as you would expect.

At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I talked about this in my book ‘Doctoring Data,’ under the heading ‘Viagra and the drugs of unintended consequences.’ I posed the question. ‘If we were to prescribe Viagra as an antihypertensive, which is entirely possible, and it were found to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, which effect do you think would be responsible for the benefit? The blood pressure lowering effect, or the anticoagulant effects? Or something else.’

Since I wrote those words, someone has actually looked at the impact of PDE5is on cardiovascular disease. Researchers at Manchester University, in the UK, studied the use of Viagra in people with diabetes – who often have erectile dysfunction. Here is what they found:

‘Viagra could prevent heart attacks, according to research. Patients taking the male impotence drug were found to have a lower risk of having a heart attack or dying from heart failure than those not on the medication. The lead scientist told the Daily Express the findings are “incredibly exciting”.²

The research paper was published in ‘Heart’, a BMJ journal. Actually, this paper was published last year, but only seems to have hit the press in the last few days. I spotted it in the Times a few days ago.

Here are the main results (for those readers who like their statistics)

‘Results: Compared with non-users, men who are prescribed PDE5is (Viagra, Cialis and the like – my words) (n=1359) experienced lower percentage of deaths during follow-up (19.1% vs 23.8%) and lower risk of all-cause mortality (unadjusted HR=0.69 (95% CI: 0.64 to 0.79); p<0.001)). The reduction in risk of mortality (HR=0.54 (0.36 to 0.80); p=0.002) remained after adjusting for age, estimated glomerular filtration rate, smoking status, prior cerebrovascular accident (CVA) hypertension, prior myocardial infarction (MI), systolic blood pressure, use of statin, metformin, aspirin and β-blocker medication. PDE5i users had lower rates of incident MI (incidence rate ratio (0.62 (0.49 to 0.80), p<0.0001) with lower mortality (25.7% vs 40.1% deaths; age-adjusted HR=0.60 (0.54 to 0.69); p=0.001) compared with non-users within this subgroup.’³

For those who don’t like their statistics quite as much as me (shame on you). I shall attempt to simplify.

• Over a seven year period, those men taking PDE5is (Viagra Cialis and the like) had a 4.7% reduction in overall mortality – compared to men who did not.
• Those taking Viagra were 38% less likely to have a myocardial infarction
• If you did have a myocardial infarction, those who were taking PDE5is had a 25.7% death rate. Those who were not taking PDE5is had a 40.1% death rate. So, if you were unfortunate to have a heart attack, you were 14.6% less likely (absolute risk reduction) to die if you were taking PDE5is.

Or, to shorten this even more

• 4.7% reduction in overall mortality
• 38% reduction in MI (relative risk reduction)
• 14.6% reduction in death after an MI

Whilst the first figure of a 4.7% reduction in overall mortality may not sound terrible exciting, it knocks all antihypertensives and cholesterol lowering medication into a cocked hat. Even if you add them together and multiply by two – on their best day. Because 4.7% is an absolute risk reduction. [Absolute mortality reduction in the Heart Protection Study (HPS), the most positive statin trial, was 1.8% over five years]

The benefits of Viagra are even more startling when it comes to having a heart attack (MI). The current ‘gold standard’ treatment of choice is Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI), which basically means popping a stent into a blocked coronary artery to open it up again.

It has been estimated that PCI results in a 2% absolute reduction in mortality⁴. On the other hand, Viagra gives you, very nearly, a 15% reduction in overall mortality. Or, to put it another way, Viagra may be seven and a half times as effective as PCI.

But it does not end here. it was also found that men with heart failure were 36% less likely to die if they took a PDE5i.

‘In the other subgroups, there was an inverse association between PDE5i use and all-cause mortality. Those with a recorded history of congestive cardiac failure, TIA and PVD had 36%, 40% and 34% lower risk, respectively.’ [A TIA is a transient Ischaemic attack/small stroke. PVD is peripheral vessel disease.]

Congestive cardiac failure is usually shortened to heart failure. [This 36% is a relative risk reduction, and I could not work out what the absolute risk was from the paper. I am probably too thick].

The effect on heart failure is almost certainly because another benefit of increasing NO is that you increase ‘angiogenesis’, otherwise known as, ‘the creation of new blood vessels’. If a coronary artery does completely block, this often leads to heart failure, as not enough oxygen and other nutrients can get into the heart muscle downstream.

However, if collateral blood vessels develop, the blood will be directed around the blockage and back into the artery downstream, through these newly created blood vessels. Although collateral circulation is not as effective as a fully patent coronary artery, it will create a significant flow of oxygen and nutrients once more. Thus, heart failure will be greatly improved.

Louis Ignarro, who identified nitric oxide (NO) as the key chemical messenger that dilated blood vessels, and won the Nobel Prize for doing so, decided to start treating people who have end stage heart failure with l-arginine. He had been looking for a substance that would, naturally increase NO, and found l-arginine did the job best. He has had some amazing results. Perhaps he should start using Viagra instead.

This study, I must add, was not interventional, it was observational. However, it strongly supports the hypothesis that increasing NO synthesis is just about the most important thing you can do. If you want to avoid dying from CVD.

Do I think everyone should take Viagra? Well, if you have heart failure, diabetes and a high risk of CVD – probably. Will you get a doctor to prescribe it for you, for CVD prevention? Absolutely no chance. Will anyone ever fund a study on this? With the drugs now off patent – no chance.

Oh, the joys of modern medicine. Unless someone does a controlled randomised double blind study on a medication, doctors will not prescribe – are not allowed to prescribe. However, virtually the only people with the money to do such studies are pharmaceutical companies. If the patent life of a drug has expired, no money can be made. So, no trial will be done. So, drugs that are almost certainly beneficial wither on the vine.

Unusually, for me, I do not blame the pharmaceutical companies for this. They are not charities. They need to make money or they die. You cannot expect them to spend hundreds of millions on a clinical study, without any possible means of gaining a return on their investment. We live in a funny old world.

In the meantime, look to other things that can increase NO synthesis. L-arginine/L-citrulline does this. Potassium does this. Sunlight does this. Exercise does this. Meditation does this. Vitamin D does this, as does Vitamin C. What are you waiting for? Go for a walk in the sun and eat an orange – you will live forever.

 

1: https://www.forbes.com/2002/10/23/cx_mh_1023pfizer.html

2: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/viagra-could-lower-heart-attack-risk-and-risk-of-dying-from-heart-failure-a7082801.html

3: http://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2016/07/26/heartjnl-2015-309223.full

4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12517460?access_num=12517460&link_type=MED&dopt=Abstract

[Hold the front page]

Last night I watched a you tube presentation which completely astonished me. It was given by Professor Salim Yusuf, who is as mainstream as mainstream can possibly be. Here, from Wikipedia:

‘Salim Yusuf (born November 26, 1952) is an Indian-born Canadian physician, the Marion W. Burke Chair in Cardiovascular Disease at McMaster University Medical School and currently the President of the World Heart Federation, a world-renowned cardiologist and epidemiologist. In 2001, he published a landmark study that proved the benefits of clopidogrel in acute coronary syndrome without ST elevation.’

Here, from Forbes magazine in 2012:

‘McMaster University’s Salim Yusuf has tied for second place in the annual ranking of the “hottest” scientific researchers, according to Thomson Reuter’s Science Watch. Yusuf was a co-author of 13 of the most cited papers in 2011. Only one other researcher, genomic pioneer Eric Lander of the Broad Institute of MIT, had more highly-cited papers than Yusuf.’¹

On February the 12^th he gave a presentation at a cardiology conference in Davos, Switzerland which can be seen on YouTube. In this presentation, he makes the following points:

1. Saturated fat does raise LDL, a bit, but has no effect on CVD – maybe slightly beneficial. Monounsaturated fats are slightly beneficial. Polyunsaturated fats are neutral.
2. Carbohydrate intake is most closely associated with CVD
3. Fruit and vegetable intake has little or no impact on CVD – nor does fish intake [He wonders where the five portions of fruit and vegetable intake recommendations actually came from]. Vegetables in particular have no benefit.
4. Legumes – beans and suchlike – are beneficial.
5. The recommendations on salt intake are completely wrong, and set far too low. For those who do not have high blood pressure, low salt intake increase mortality. On the other hand, high salt intake does no harm.
6. He recommends higher potassium intake.
7. He criticizes Ancel Keys and lauds Nina Teicholz [Author of big fat surprise].

Well, good for him. It seems to have taken him a long time to get there, but he did in the end. Of course, mainstream medicine will remain in shocked silence, so you will likely hear nothing of this in the mainstream media. But, hey, you get to see it here. Perhaps someone would like to send this presentation to the BHF and the AHA and ask them for a comment?

The YouTube presentation is here:

 

1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/04/25/when-youre-hot-youre-hot-salim-yusuf-second-most-influential-scientist-in-2011/#6ac825575abe

Lead

I have been studying cardiovascular disease for well over thirty years now. I have come across a million different hypotheses about what causes it. There is almost no foodstuff, vitamin, infectious agent, chemical compound, atomic element or activity [lack of, or excess] that has not been proposed at some point.

Many of them can look very promising, and the underlying hypothesis is often elegant – very elegant indeed. But what you must do with any hypothesis is to hold it close to the unforgiving flame of mortality data, and see if it is tempered by the heat – or simply melts.

I resolved very early on in my long and winding study on cardiovascular disease that any hypothesis had to explain everything – not just some things. For example, as almost everyone in the entire world knows a raised cholesterol level is considered the most important cause of cardiovascular disease. But it is exceedingly easy to find facts that seem to completely contradict this.

Here, for example, is a little graph looking at only two countries. It compares the death rate from heart disease in Russia and Switzerland, in men under the age of sixty-five relation to the average cholesterol level in those two countries.

in Russia, with an average cholesterol level of 5.1mmol/l (197mg/dl) had a death rate 834% higher than that in Switzerland, which had an average cholesterol level of 6.4mmol/l (248mg/dl). Yes, this graph is the right way around. Yes, these data come from the World Health Organisation, and can be found on the British Heart Foundation (BHF) website. These particular statistics are now very deeply buried, but can still be found here: https://www.bhf.org.uk/publications/statistics/european-cardiovascular-disease-statistics-2008

I sometimes wonder if anyone at the BHF actually looks at these data, but that is a question for another day. Of course, when presented with facts like this, the dismissals. and creation of ad-hoc hypotheses rapidly reach into the sky. The word ‘paradox’ will be used pretty heavily, that’s always a good, temporary, escape route. In reality these two figures represent a full-blown black swan. But, hey, facts are slippery things.

Anyway, in my quest to explain everything about heart disease, perhaps the hardest single thing to explain is the fact that the rate of cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and strokes) has been going down in pretty much every single Western country for decades. I would say ‘first world’ country, but my son (a geography graduate) informs me that this terminology is now virtually barred for being racist. I shall be considered an ancient, prejudiced reactionary for using such a term.

So, I will say, Western Europe, North American, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and suchlike.

Now, the decline in CVD did not start at the same time, in all these countries. At this point I will make myself a hostage to fortune and make some sweeping statements. The rate of CVD peaked first in the US, in the late 1950s and has been falling since. It peaked next in Finland in the 1960s. In most of the other countries CVD peaked in the 1970s, before falling. It is impossible to say that there was a uniform worldwide effect. [Today, some countries are on the way up the mortality curve e.g. China and India].

However, I will make the general statement that CVD has been falling in most ‘first world’ countries for decades. This started long before any effective medical interventions were available. In the US, in the 1950s, there were no effective blood pressure lowering agents, no stents, no CABG, no clot busters…. Nothing really.

Possibly the greatest single factor has been the reduction in smoking. At the end of the second world war virtually all men smoked. Nearly 90% in the UK in the 1950s. Since that time the number of smokers has fallen, and fallen.

In addition to this, during the 60s, 70s, 80s and onwards, medical interventions have also greatly improved. In-hospital survival from a heart attack or stroke has improved almost year on year. The figures are complex, but around 60% of those admitted to hospital with a heart attack used to die – it is now around 30%, maybe less.

Some of this is due to the fact that ‘strict bed rest’ following a heart attack, the key medical intervention for decades, was abandoned. A piece of medical mismanagement that killed millions and millions… and millions.

What else may have cause the fall? I think that in the UK, the clean air act has a significant effect. The Great Smog of London, in the early 1950s, killed tens of thousands in less than a week. Much of this was from respiratory complications, but also CVD. It is now more clearly established that air pollution, in general, increases the risk of CVD. Most Western countries have drastically reduced air pollution.

Now, I would like to consider something almost never mentioned. Lead. That is the element, not the verb. Or the noun, as in dog lead.

In the 1920s someone discovered that if you put lead in petrol/gasoline it had all sorts of benefits on engine performance and wear and tear – and so on. Unfortunately, lead also caused all sorts of problem for human performance, and wear and tear. It is a heavy metal and, like other heavy metals, a powerful human toxin.

Despite the fact that lead toxicity was known for decades, it took until the nineteen-sixties before countries starting banning it from fuel – and pipes in housing – and the like. Which reversed a long-term trend of lead building up inside human beings. It lasts for decades within bone – gradually leaking out.

With regards to lead and CVD, is there a link?

A researcher called Weisskopf looked at the amount of lead in bones, and the rate of CVD. He found that those with the most lead in their bones were 837% more likely to die from CVD (relative risk)¹ than those with the least lead in their bones. Now, whilst that is a relative risk, it is of the magnitude where we can safely say we are looking straight at a direct cause of CVD.

How does lead cause CVD. Most likely through the following mechanisms

‘Lead causes endothelial dysfunction by binding and inhibiting endothelial nitric oxide synthase and decreasing nitric oxide production.’²

Yes, we are straight back to my old friends, endothelial dysfunction and decreased nitric oxide (NO) production. In the world of cardiovascular disease, if you know where to look, all roads lead to NO.

If lead does cause CVD, is there any evidence that removing lead from the body can reduce the risk of CVD? [‘Reversibility’ and ‘Experimental Evidence’, the two most powerful of Bradford Hill’s canons for causation]. Which brings me to TACT. A trial designed to look at the impact of chelation on CVD. A way of removing heavy metals from the body…

What I love about this trial is that it was set up primarily to prove that chelation was nonsense, to be laid alongside homeopathy, and suchlike – by mainstream researchers. To quote an article in Medscape:

‘The original TACT trial wrestled with enrolment, ultimately taking over a decade to yield results, in part because cardiologists were absolutely convinced that chelation was a load of horse hockey.’ ³

TACT stands for Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy. When I first heard about chelation, I too, dismissed it as horse hockey. However, it turns out that I done the thing that I always advise everyone else against doing. I placed it in the ‘impossible/horse hockey’ category without making the effort of trying to find out what it was really about.

As it turns out, I should have made more effort…

‘TACT found that patients randomized to a regimen involving up to 40 separate three-hour infusions of a chelation-therapy solution (disodium ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid [EDTA], ascorbic acid, magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, B vitamins, procainamide, and a small amount of standard heparin) experienced an 18% drop in the trial’s primary end point (all-cause death, reinfarction, stroke, revascularization, or hospitalization for angina) compared with patients randomized to a placebo infusion.’³

More extraordinary than this:

‘When we broke the composite down to look at our secondary end points, we found that we had about a 40% reduction in total mortality, a 40% reduction in recurrent MI, and about a 50% reduction in mortality [in patients with diabetes],”’³

A 40% – 50% reduction in mortality. Well, well, well. Eat your heart out statins. In fact, eat your heart out every single pharmaceutical product ever tested. What has been the effect on mainstream thinking on CVD? As you would expect, absolutely nothing has changed in the slightest. Still TACT2 is now being set up – so we can all look forward to that being ignored in about seven to ten years’ time.

Anyway, in an attempt to bring some structure to this blog, I am going to return to the start. Why has the rate of CVD gone down in most first world countries over the last fifty years? One of the reasons, I believe, is that the level of heavy metal pollutants (in particular, lead) has been dropping since around the mid nineteen sixties.

I think it could be argued that the US was the first country to embrace the motor car. Thus lead toxicity would have hit the US before anywhere else. I am not going to argue this too strongly, but I place it before you, for your consideration.

I shall finish by saying that, if you want to look for reasons for the pattern on CVD over the last sixty years, or so, you really need to start looking outside the box. For there are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

1: Weisskopf MG, Jain N, Nie H, et al. ‘A prospective study of bone lead concentration and death from all causes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer in the Department of Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study’. Circulation 2009;120(12):1056-64.

2: Natalia V. Solenkova et al: ‘Metal pollutants and cardiovascular disease: Mechanisms and consequences of exposure.‘ Am Heart J 2014;168:812-22

3: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/814643?pa=QYKVfN05tfWXqq6%2BfjZ30whyKyHVDGvMW4WYyHO8jprcrUBo6WRIR4VFzOaThtqB8SIvl8zjYv73GUyW5rsbWA%3D%3D

In my long and winding road around cardiovascular disease I have often visited the same themes a few times. In part, this is because we are not dealing with Newtonian physics here. If billiard ball A strikes billiard ball B, at five metres per second, at an angle of 45 degrees, billiard ball B will move off at angle C at velocity D, assuming perfect elasticity. This will always happen, every single time.

On the other hand, with CVD, the complexity of human physiology and psychology, environmental factors, genetics the time of day, even sunspot activity – can have an effect – so some people have reported.

‘Space proton flux and the temporal distribution of cardiovascular deaths.

The influence of solar activity (SA) and geomagnetic activity (GMA) on human homeostasis has long been investigated. The aim of the present study was to analyse the relationship between monthly proton flux (> 90 MeV) and other SA and GMA parameters and between proton flux and temporal (monthly) distribution of total and cardiovascular-related deaths. The data from 180 months (1974-1989) of distribution in the Beilinson Campus of the Rabin Medical Centre, Israel, and of 108 months (1983-1991) from the Kaunas Medical Academy, were analysed and compared with SA, GMA and space proton flux (> 90 MeV). It was concluded: monthly levels of SA, GMA and radiowave propagation (Fof2) are significantly and adversely correlated with monthly space proton flux (> 90 MeV); medical-biological phenomena that increase during periods of low solar and/or geomagnetic activity may be stimulated by physical processes provoked by the concomitant increase in proton flux; the monthly number of deaths related (positively or negatively) to SA are significantly and adversely related to the space proton flux (> 90 MeV).’¹

Oh yes, I do cast my net far and wide when looking at cardiovascular disease, as I feel I must. Quite what we are all supposed to do when the space proton flux is greater than 90MeV, I am not certain. Perhaps a tin foil hat would become appropriately protective headgear. By the way, this paper can be found in the National Institutes of Health on-line library – Pubmed. Referenced, peer-reviewed, and everything.

The point being? The point being that if you are looking for ‘billiard ball’ certainty, you are not going to find it here. If you were to do absolutely everything that I believe to be protective against cardiovascular disease, you will shift the odds in your favour, but you could still get struck down by a heart attack or stroke.

Anyway, with that proviso firmly in place, I shall move ahead, or maybe backwards. On the basis that some subjects need a second visit, I have decided to return to look at vitamin C again. First, because I have just been harangued by someone who believes that if you take high doses of vitamin C every day, you can reverse/cure heart disease completely and utterly. He also felt that I had completely ignored the work of G C Willis ‘The reversibility of atherosclerosis’, and also the research of Pauling and Rath on vitamin C.

It is true that I have not actually mentioned Willis before, but I have certainly written at length of Pauling and Rath. However, I realise that time passes, people forget things, and previous blogs settle to the bottom of the sediment layer. Therefore, it is not a bad idea to refresh things from time to time. I am also returning to vitamin C and the issues around it, because I have been getting a lot of correspondence about lipoprotein (a) (Lp(a)) recently. It seems this lipoprotein is gaining increasing attention. Of course, vitamin C and Lp(a) are tightly bound together.

Time, I think, for a quick refresher about this whole area. Particularly as it helps to confirm my central hypothesis that CVD is a disease of blood clotting, and you would struggle to explain the vitamin C/Lp(a) axis in any other way.

To begin. At some point in the distant past, our ancestors lost the ability to manufacture vitamin C. This happened, so I recently read, around sixty-one million years ago. Seems a long way back, but there you go. It has happened to some other animal groups, but not many. Quite why it occurred is unclear. You probably think you know, but I suspect you are wrong.

Interestingly, and as a bit of an aside, vitamin C is synthesized through a multi-step process, and the original molecule is glucose. Humans lack the last step in the process. Perhaps, because of this, glucose and vitamin C have some interesting interactions in the body. Mainly, it seems, that high levels of glucose prevent vitamin C from entering cells. Particularly immune cells, which need a lot of vitamin C to operate effectively. Make of that what you will.

Moving on, because humans cannot synthesize their own vitamin C, we must obtain it from within our diet. If we do not manage to eat enough, we will end up with scurvy. Scurvy presents with many different symptoms, but the one I am going to focus on in this blog is bleeding.

Bleeding occurs, because vitamin C is essential for collagen synthesis – a critical building block of supportive tissue throughout the body. Loss of collagen leads to break down of various structures in the body. For example, the walls of blood vessel walls which, start to break down and ‘crack.’

As blood vessel walls crack, they leak, and bleed. This leads to the best known symptom of scurvy, which is bleeding gums. This was well recognised several hundred years ago, mainly in sailors who had a highly-restricted diet during long voyages. In scurvy there is also bleeding in many other blood vessels, but you can’t easily see it. The usual cause of death in severe scurvy is internal bleeding.

On the positive side, after sixty-one million years, or so, evolution came up with a partial solution to the early stages of scurvy. Namely, the synthesis of a substance to block the cracks in the blood vessel walls, and control the bleeding. This substance is, or course, lipoprotein (a).

Lipoprotein (a) (Lp(a)) is synthesized in the liver, and it travels around in the bloodstream, looking for any cracks in blood vessels walls a.k.a. damaged endothelium. When a crack is spotted Lp(a) is attracted to the area and sticks very firmly, and cannot easily be removed. Of course, the rest of the blood clotting system also moves into action, so all hell breaks loose. Therefore Lp(a) becomes mixed up with platelets, red blood cells, fibrin, and almost everything else in the blood, including all the other lipoproteins.

However, Lp(a) has a very special trick up its sleeve. It mimics plasminogen.

After a blood clot forms, anywhere in the circulation, it has to be broken down, and removed – once the blood vessel underneath it has repaired. I liken this (not very accurately) to road works. If the road surface is damaged, the repair team comes in, sets up barriers and traffic lights and suchlike, then they repair the road. Then all the barriers, and traffic lights, and suchlike, must be removed.

Within a blood vessel, removal of barriers, and traffic lights, is a tricky exercise. Where does the blood clot go? Once a large blood clot has formed, over a ‘crack’ in the wall, it cannot stay there forever, restricting, or totally obstructing, blood flow. On the other hand, if the entire clot simply broke off, and travelled down the artery, it would get stuck as the artery narrowed – causing a complete blockage. Not a good idea.

Ergo, there is a need for a process that removes blood clots that have formed within blood vessels. It is called thrombolysis, or fibrinolysis. To ‘lyse’ means to break down.

The main player in thrombolysis is plasminogen. It becomes incorporated into (almost) all blood clots that form. It is activated by tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA). This turns plasminogen into plasmin, the ‘active’ enzyme that slices fibrin apart [fibrin is a long, and very strong, string of fibrinogen molecules that wraps round blood clots and binds them together].

t-PA can be manufactured and given to people who have heart attacks and strokes, to break apart the blood clots that are blocking the arteries in the brain, or the heart. You may have heard of t-PA referred to as a ‘clot-buster.’ Great stuff, but not so good if your stroke is due to a bleed in the brain, rather than a blood clot. In which case….

t-PA has been around for a while now and, with heart attacks at least, has mainly been superseded by angioplasty. Which is to open up the blocked artery, and stick a metal support (stent) into the artery. T-PA is still use in ischaemic strokes. That is, after you have had a brain scan to work out what sort of stroke you are having.

Sorry to appear to be going off in different directions here, but the systems of blood clotting are highly complex, and I think that explaining where Lp(a) fits in, is important.

Lp(a) is actually a lipoprotein, just like LDL. In fact, it is exactly like LDL, because it is basically LDL. It is the same size and shape, it contains triglyceride and cholesterol. However, it differs in one important aspect. Whilst LDL has a protein stuck to it called apolipoprotein B-100, Lp(a) has another protein stuck to it called apolipoprotein (a). Which is why it is called lipoprotein (a).

The fascinating thing about the protein, apolipoprotein (a), is that is has almost exactly the same chemical structure as plasminogen. So close, that you could hardly tell it apart. However, apolipoprotein (a) is completely unaffected by t-PA. It does not convert to plasmin, it is inert. So, when you want to break down a clot (fibrinolysis), the parts that have Lp(a) incorporated into it, cannot be broken down.

Which means that if you have a high Lp(a) level, you will develop bigger and more difficult to break down blood clots. Exactly what evolution had in mind for creatures that cannot manufacture vitamin C, and need to plug cracks in artery walls when the vitamin C level falls. However, not so good, if you want to stop atherosclerosis from developing.

Because these Lp(a) rich blood clots have to go somewhere, and the only place that they can go is to be absorbed into the artery wall itself, and then broken down. However, these clots are more difficult to break down, so, with repeated clots over the same area of artery wall, bigger and bigger plaques will grow.

That, anyway, is the theory.

What G.C. Willis did in 1957 was to study guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are another animal that does not synthesize vitamin C. He made them scorbutic (vitamin C deficient a.k.a. scurvy). Actually, he did not make them all scorbutic. He had a control group of twelve guinea pigs that he put on a vitamin C deficient diet, then injected them with vitamin C. None of these twelve guinea pigs developed any measurable atherosclerosis.

On the other hand, those guinea pigs on a scorbutic diet rapidly developed atherosclerosis. When I say rapidly, I mean within days. I think this point is worth repeating. If you make a guinea pig scorbutic, it will develop plaques, identical to those found in human arteries within days.

Willis then started feeding his guinea pigs vitamin C, and he found that the lipid filled plaques quite rapidly disappeared. He describes what he saw happening to the guinea after they were fed vitamin C.

‘The results of this investigation indicate that early lesions of atherosclerosis are quickly resorbed. The stages of this process are first a fading of lipid staining in the region of the internal elastic membrane with later a disappearance of all extracellular fat. Active phagocytosis of lipid by macrophage occurs, and when these macrophages finally disappear no evidence of the lesion remains.’ ²

I shall translate that passage for those with a non-science background.

What Willis found was that if you remove vitamin C from the guinea pig diet, they develop fat filled atherosclerotic plaques within days. If you then add vitamin C to the diet again, the plaques rapidly disappear (within days). The process of removal appears to be that the fat/lipid is ingested (phagocytosed) by white blood cells – known as macrophages.

However, if you let the plaques grow for too long, it is far more difficult to get rid of them.

‘More advanced lesions are considerably more resistant to reversal. Extensive lipid deposits clear in some parts of plaque but islands of intensely staining lipid persists in other parts. The macrophage response to such areas is only slight.’

It seems that if you don’t get rid of the plaque pretty much straight away, you don’t get rid of it at all. [Or maybe he didn’t wait long enough to see what happened over months, or years. Although my childhood memory of guinea pigs is that they tend to drop dead at the slightest excuse].

Of course, this was guinea pigs, not humans, so we must be careful not to extrapolate too far. However, previously, Willis had studied humans. Not many, only sixteen. Ten people with identified plaques were given vitamin C, six were not. In those ten treated with vitamin C, the plaques got bigger in three, stayed the same in one, and reduced in size in six. In those six not given vitamin C, three remained the same, and in three the plaques got bigger. Interesting, but hardly cast-iron proof of anything.

At this point there are a number of strands to gather together. We now know that humans cannot synthesize vitamin C, so we need to eat it. Without enough vitamin C, our blood vessels crack and bleed, and in severe cases we bleed to death.

In order to provide a degree of protection against vitamin C deficiency (scurvy), we produce lipoprotein (a) to fill up the cracks the blood vessels. However, unsurprisingly, a high level of lipoprotein (a) Lp(a) is associated with a higher rate of CVD.

‘In summary, elevated Lp(a) levels associate robustly and specifically with increased CVD risk. The association is continuous in shape without a threshold and does not depend on high levels of LDL or non-HDL cholesterol, or on the levels or presence of other cardiovascular risk factors.’ ³

This raises two inter-connected questions. Does vitamin C supplementation lower Lp(a) levels, and does it reduce the risk of CVD? It is of course entirely possible that vitamin C could reduce CVD risk by protecting blood vessels from ‘cracking’ without having any effect on Lp(a) levels.

Now you would think that this would have been an area of research interest to someone…. Anyone. However, the only people who seem to have looked at this area in any details are Linus Pauling (double Nobel prize winner, now dead) and Matthias Rath. A man whose reputation within the mainstream medical profession makes that of Andrew Wakefield look like mother Teresa. This from Wikipedia:

‘The Sunday Times (Johannesburg) has described Rath as an “international campaigner for the use of natural remedies” whose “theories on the treatment of cancer have been rejected by health authorities all over the world.”

On HIV/AIDS, Rath has disparaged the pharmaceutical industry and denounced antiretroviral medication as toxic and dangerous, while claiming that his vitamin pills could reverse the course of AIDS. As a result, Rath has been accused of “potentially endangering thousands of lives” in South Africa, a country with a massive AIDS epidemic where Rath was active in the mid-2000s. The head of Médecins Sans Frontières said “This guy is killing people by luring them with unrecognised treatment without any scientific evidence”; Rath attempted to sue him.

Rath’s claims and methods have been widely criticised by medical organisations, AIDS-activist groups, and the United Nations, among others Former South African President Thabo Mbeki and former Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang have also been criticised by the medical and AIDS-activist community for their perceived support for Rath’s claims According to doctors with Médecins Sans Frontières, the Treatment Action Campaign (a South African AIDS-activist group) and a former Rath colleague, unauthorised clinical trials run by Rath and his associates, using vitamins as therapy for HIV, resulted in deaths of some participants. In 2008, the Cape High Court found the trials unlawful, banned Rath and his foundation from conducting unauthorised clinical trials and from advertising their products, and instructed the South African Health Department to fully investigate Rath’s vitamin trials.’

Matthias Rath even managed to fall out with Linus Pauling, before Pauling’s death, and law suits ensued. Rath has also successfully sued the BMJ, received £100,000 in damages. So, as you can see, not really a poster boy for mainstream medical research.

I include this information, as I think it is critical to the entire Vitamin C discussion. Because Matthias Rath is viewed as absolute scientific poison this has made the whole area of vitamin C supplementation a complete no-go area for any respectable scientist. If, as a doctor, you try to suggest that vitamin supplementation may be a possible treatment for, say, CVD, you might as well hand you licence over to the authorities at the same time – to save them the trouble of striking you off the medical register (almost a joke, but not quite).

So, essentially, we have a huge void here. The only research that I have ever seen (maybe I missed some) to establish if vitamin C supplementation does actually lower Lp(a) levels was done by Matthias Rath. And, according to him, it does. More so, in those with higher levels to start with. I am not referencing this research, but I would suggest you have a look around Rath and Pauling and vitamin C and Lp(a). See what you think. I think the research is robust.

With regard to the critical question, does vitamin C reduce the risk of CVD [with or without lowering Lp(a)]. I would say, case currently unproven. This does not mean that it does not (in fact I believe that it probably does). What I mean by ‘case currently unproven’ is that no-one has done a large scale interventional study using vitamin C to find out if it really reduces CVD.

The problem here is that such a study is almost certainly never going to be done. There is no way anyone can make money from doing such a study. Vitamin C cannot be patented, so if a company spend several hundred million ‘proving’ that vitamin C reduced CVD death, they would never get any money back.

You would have to find a Governmental organisation, tax payer funded, to do such a study. And with Matthias Rath around, that just ain’t going to happen. No-one would touch it.

However, there is one way to definitely reduce Lp(a) levels, and that is to take l-carnitine. Here, from a study called ‘L-carnitine reduces plasma lipoprotein(a) levels in patients with hyper Lp(a)’

‘L-carnitine, a natural compound stimulating fatty acid oxidation at the mitochondrial level, was tested in a double blind study in 36 subjects with Lp(a) levels ranging between 40-80 mg/dL, in most with concomitant LDL cholesterol and triglyceride elevations. L-carnitine (2 g/day) significantly reduced Lp(a) levels… the reduction being more dramatic in the subjects with the more marked elevations. In particular, in the L-carnitine group, 14 out of 18 subjects (77.8%) had a significant reduction of Lp(a) vs only 7 out of 18 (38.9%) in the placebo group. In a significant number of subjects the reduction of Lp(a) resulted in a return of this major cardiovascular risk parameter to the normal range.’ ⁴

Does this then result in a reduction in CVD risk? The answer is that I do not know, for sure. A meta-analysis of L-carnitine supplementation has been done. This consisted of five trials on three thousand people. L-carnitine supplementation did show some benefit – which did not reach statistical significance, but came very, very close.

For those of you who like a bit of statistics, here we go

‘The interaction test yielded no significant differences between the effects of the four daily oral maintenance dosages of L-carnitine (i.e., 2 g, 3 g, 4 g, and 6 g) on all-cause mortality (risk ratio [RR] = 0.77, 95% CI [0.57-1.03], P = 0.08)’⁵

CI [0.57 to 1.03] – close, but no cigar.

To put this into figures anyone can understand. In the intervention groups (those taking L-carnitine) there were 83 deaths. In the control group (those not taking L-carnitine) there were 106 deaths. Total study population was 3108, split in two groups: control and intervention. This gets as close to statistical significance as you can get (virtually). In fact, if this had been a statin trial, you would never have heard the end of it. ‘Ladies and gentlemen a 22% reduction in overall mortality with L-carnitine supplementation.’ [Oh, what fun statistics are].

So, what do we know?

• A high level of Lp(a) is associated with a higher risk of CVD.
• There is a probable causal mechanism linking Lp(a) to CVD death
• Lp(a) is synthesized in animals that cannot make their own Vitamin C
• A lack of vitamin C causes blood vessels to crack open – and potentially leads to atherosclerotic plaques development
• Animal models have shown that a lack of vitamin C does lead to rapid atherosclerotic plaque development, and that replacement of vitamin C causes rapid regression of atherosclerosis
• Some evidence from humans suggest that vitamin C supplementation causes regression of atherosclerotic plaques
• Vitamin C supplementation does seem to lead to a reduction in Lp(a) levels
• L-carnitine supplementation does lead to a reduction in Lp(a) levels
• L-carnitine supplementation may reduce overall mortality.

What would I now recommend? If you have a high Lp(a) level take lots of vitamin C and l-carnitine and see if your Lp(a) level falls. If it does, keep taking lots of vitamin C and l-carnitine for the rest of your life. If it does not fall? Not sure.

As for the rest of us? Well I have no idea how much vitamin C anyone should take, or how much l-carnitine is required. There is literally no area of medicine that is less clear than our true vitamin requirements. You can find a thousand shouty people supporting high vitamin supplementation – any or all vitamins.

My view. I do not think the RDAs for vitamins are remotely accurate, or useful. They were established in times of absolute deficiency. The agreed Vitamin B12 levels, for example, were based on seven people, over sixty years ago, and remain unchanged to this day. All seven had pernicious anaemia (caused by vitamin B12 deficiency).

So, I do not believe in the RDAs at all. They are often, I believe, too low for optimal health. I can see no harm coming to people from taking lots of vitamin C or lots of l-carnitine. So, supplement away. You will probably reduce your risk of dying from CVD.

 

References
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9140214

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1823880/?page=3

3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3295201/

4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11213533

5: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4223629/