(This is fifth in a series of articles describing heart disease research in the New Orleans area.) How do the fatty substances, associated with advanced hardening of the arteries, get into the arterial wall?
Louisiana State university medical school scientists believe if they can find the answer to this it might help solve the whole problem of atherosclerosis.
For one thing it might help explain why people, living in the United States, develop serious hardening of the arteries at a much earlier age than people living in other countries.
It might help explain why proportionately more people in the United States die of heart attacks than anywhere else in the world.
In the hopes of tracking down the answers, LSU scientists are now growing smooth muscle cells in test tubes.
"We know that these lipids or fatty substances are actually inside the smooth muscle cells of the arterial wall," explained Dr^Jack Geeji who heads the project "so we thought if we could successfully grow t h e|
same smooth muscle cells outside the body it would give us a chance to watch the cells in action."
Test-Tube Jars
As the first step in the project, the LSU scientists chopped up some arteries. Then they lined up a seris of glass jars to use as test tubes.
Into each jar they put 24 small pieces of arteries. Blood serum was added following
which the test-tube jars were placed in an incubator.
Within a short time the cells began growing, attaching them selves to the glass surface oj the test tubes.
Now that they knew it was possible to grow such cells the scientists were ready to go one step further. They were set to test cells, reactions to factors believed to be associated with hardening of the arteries.
Since saturated fats are high on the suspect list they began feeding these fats to the smooth muscle cells. They wanted to find out if the cells would prosper under such treatment or whether they would sicken and die.
Stress Is Factor
"We are also exploring the possibility that saturated fats may actually help the cells to accumulate the fats associated with hardening of the arteries,' Dr. Geer explained.
The pathologist said that since stress is also believed to be tied in with hardening of the arteries he and his co-workers are now trying to figure out a good way to measure stress.
This isn't easy to do," admitted Dr. Geer," but we could try placing in the test tubs hormones secreted during periods of stress—you know hormones like those made by the drenals. Then we *could watch the cells' reactions to these hor-
Dr. Henry McGill. who heads tfie pathology department at LSU, said, "maybe we'll also be able to figure out a way of exercising our test-tube cells."
"As you know the people living in Latin America tend to go in more for hard, physical labor," the pathologist added. "Yet there are fewer harder heart attacks in this section; less serious changes in the arteries. It could be that in this country we are not getting enough exercise,"
Tedious Process
Dr. McGill said one possibility for laboratory testing would be to feed blood to the test-tube cells.
"We could get some blood from Guatemala, for instance, and feed it to our laboratory cells," he said. "Then we could get some blood from the United States and feed it to similar :ells. After that we could watch to see if in any way the blood was proving injurious to the cells."
The pathologist said that obviously something happens to the smooth muscle cells in the arterial wall which causes them to go haywire.
1 'It could be something in the blood which comes from the outside, such as food," he explained, "or it could be something which comes from the inside, such as hormones."
Dr. McGill said laboratory findings are giving some clues; that these clues may be pointing in the right direction.
"But it's a slow tedious pro-: cess," he admitted. "It may take years before scientists can come up with all the answers. PHOTO: EEK ANSWERS IN RESEARCH ON ARTERIES Dr. Jack Geer supervises feeding of muscle cells by Miss Claire Grefer, a pathology technician.
