For many years, doctors have focused on controlling diabetes, lowering blood pressure, and reducing cholesterol to fight heart disease.
Medications like aspirin and statins have helped many people. But heart disease is still the number one cause of death in the United States. Even people who manage their health well sometimes still have heart attacks.
Now, researchers at the University of Michigan have found a new clue. They discovered that a protein called suPAR may be a hidden cause of heart disease. SuPAR stands for soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor.
It is made by the immune system and may help explain why some people get heart disease even when their usual risk factors are under control.
A condition called atherosclerosis is one of the main causes of heart disease. It happens when fat and cholesterol build up inside the arteries. This makes the arteries hard and narrow, which blocks blood flow and can lead to heart attacks or strokes.
Until now, scientists believed that high cholesterol and high blood pressure were the main causes. But this new study shows that high levels of suPAR can also cause atherosclerosis.
SuPAR is made in the bone marrow and helps control the immune system. But when people have high levels of it, their immune system stays active all the time. This causes long-term inflammation in the body. That inflammation can damage the inside of arteries, making them more likely to collect plaque and harden.
Researchers looked at over 5,000 people who didn’t have heart disease at the start. They found that those with higher suPAR levels were more likely to develop atherosclerosis later, even if they had normal cholesterol and blood pressure.
To understand more, they checked the genes of 24,000 people and found a gene called PLAUR that controls how much suPAR a person makes. People with a certain type of this gene had more suPAR and were more likely to get heart disease.
They also used a method called Mendelian randomization with data from 500,000 people in the UK Biobank. This method uses genes to test whether something actually causes disease. The result showed that suPAR is not just linked to heart disease—it can directly cause it.
To confirm this, the scientists did experiments on mice. The mice that had high suPAR levels developed more plaque in their arteries than normal mice. This proves that suPAR can damage arteries and cause atherosclerosis.
This is a major discovery because current treatments like statins don’t lower suPAR. That means people with high suPAR levels might still be at risk for heart disease even if they take cholesterol-lowering medicine. The good news is that researchers are now looking for ways to reduce suPAR levels. This could lead to new treatments to help people who are still at risk.
The study also found a connection between suPAR and kidney disease. Many people who have heart disease also have kidney problems, and this protein may be the missing link. Treating suPAR might improve both heart and kidney health at the same time.
This research, led by Dr. Salim Hayek, was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. It could change the way doctors treat heart disease. By focusing on suPAR, doctors may soon have better ways to prevent heart attacks and strokes in the future.
If you care about heart health, please read studies about how eating eggs can help reduce heart disease risk, and Vitamin K2 could help reduce heart disease risk.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about how to remove plaques that cause heart attacks, and results showing a new way to prevent heart attacks, strokes.
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