

Vaccine to stop heart attacks could be here in 5 years  - yogrish
http://www.canada.com/health/Vaccine+stop+heart+attacks+could+here+years/6388028/story.html

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madhadron
_sigh_ Yet more poor biology on hacker news.

First, there is no causal connection known between cholesterol deposition in
arteries and heart disease. There is an absolutely clear correlation between
the two, but no evidence of cause and effect whatsoever. Decades back, calcium
was attributed with the same causal affect that cholesterol is given now due
to the same correlation, and that's resulted in a massive increase in
osteoporosis among those who followed the medical advice.

Second, it has been done in mice. There's a few things you need to know about
mice in the lab. First, they're inbred. Everyone works in a few, genetically
homogeneous strains (typically with a number of serious genetic defects).
Typically the results found in one strain change entirely when done in another
strain. Laboratories deal with this by only working on one strain and ignoring
all the others. Second, the standard care practices throughout the world for
lab mice leave them morbidly obese and inactive. All lab mice suffer from
metabolic syndrome. Any time you see a result in the literature on obesity,
fat buildup, heart disease, diabetes, or any other metabolic issue where the
experiments were done on mice, it is more likely that the experiment's
treatment made the mice drop some weight and become more metabolically normal
than that it had any actual effect.

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Dylan16807
Well, this study seems like a great way to test the connection.

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daeken
It depends on what it's controlling for. The vaccine could be completely
successful in preventing plaque buildup but have no impact on heart attack
rates whatsoever. This could be construed as an overall success.

