 |
  |
| UC Home | Courses | Departments | Library | Teaching | Research | Students | Contacts | Search | |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
||
Research could lead to new treatment for heart disease
Published by the Communications and Development Department
3 September 2002
Dr Gieseg and his research team will use the funding for a three-year study into how antioxidants released by white blood cells can affect the chemical processes leading to heart and vascular disease.
Heart and vascular disease develops when the arteries become blocked by a collection of cholesterol-filled white blood cells, Dr Gieseg says.
“The cholesterol appears to have been damaged by oxidants released by various cells in the body. These chemicals can react with and damage the cholesterol particles in the blood and artery walls.”
The white blood cells in the artery wall absorb and remove the damaged cholesterol but if the white blood cells become over loaded with too much damaged cholesterol, they change into fat sedentary cells. “It is the build up of these cholesterol filled sedentary cells which causes the blocking of the arteries in heart and vascular disease,” Dr Gieseg says.
Dr Gieseg's research will look at how chemical antioxidants produced by the bodies own white blood cells can neutralise the oxidants, so stopping the damage to the cholesterol particles. His research team will examine how changes in the artery walls affect the balance between protecting antioxidants and damaging oxidants. “An understanding of how the balance between oxidation and protection is altered, may allow the development of new treatment methods for heart and vascular disease in the future”.
The research will involve collaborations with clinicians at Christchurch and Dunedin Hospitals.
This is Dr Gieseg's second National Heart Foundation project grant. As part of his last research grant his team showed that the white blood cell antioxidant "7,8-dihydroneopterin" could protect the cholesterol particles from oxidant damage and identified a new type of damage occurring on the cholesterol particles.
Dr Gieseg is a senior lecturer in animal biochemistry, in Canterbury University’s Zoology department. His research laboratory of post- graduate students studies how the body's proteins are damaged by free radicals during disease and how antioxidants stop this process.
In 2000, Dr Gieseg's laboratory, in collaboration with research at Macquarie University, discovered a new form of free radical damage to the body's proteins, called "protein hydroperoxide". They have since gone on to show this same type of damage also occurs on the bodies cholesterol carrying particles.
For more information contact:
|
