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Dr. Prediman Shah
Cardiologist
As obesity and diabetes continue to grow, we're going to lose all the gains we have made against heart disease.
Q: How big a problem is cardiovascular disease?
Cardiovascular disease is an epidemic. It's the leading killer of men and women not only in the United States, but rapidly becoming like that all over the world. By 2020, cardiovascular disease will be the number one killer of humans on this planet.
Q: Given that we are seeing weight gain among young people, does the increase in cardiovascular disease impact children and teenagers?
Absolutely. And keep in mind that eighty percent of kids who are obese are likely to become adults that are obese. Eighty percent. So I think it's wrong to assume that heart disease begins in late life. The seeds of this disease are sown literally in childhood and in adolescence, and the manifestations are observed in the third, fifth and sixth decades; but the disease really begins very early in childhood.
Q: Tell us about the groundbreaking research you've been doing.
Well, let's just first say that we have a lot of tools currently available at our disposal that can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, ranging from healthy lifestyles to statins to lower the bad cholesterol level and so forth. But what we are working on over the last nearly ten to fourteen years is a way to reverse one of the commonest forms of heart disease that results from the buildup of LDL, or the bad cholesterol, inside the arteries that leads eventually to blockage and eventually to risk of a heart attack or stroke.
Internationally renowned cardiologist Dr. Prediman Shah directs the work of the Division of Cardiology and the Atherosclerosis Research Center at L.A.'s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Shah helped develop one of the promising new drugs that could reduce cholesterol buildup, without bypass surgery or balloon angioplasty.
Related Episode
Recommended Web Sites
Read the article Cardiovascular Disease 101 from the Mayo Clinic.
The Heart Truth is a national awareness campaign for women about heart disease.
The American Heart Association podcast provides news about cardiovascular disease.
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Published: September 15, 2005
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