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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/health/07REME.html?tntemail0

Remedies: Helping Make Arteries Healthier

By JOHN O'NEIL

ish, vitamin C and a drug used to treat gout all helped to improve arterial function, according to two studies released yesterday by the journal Circulation.

The studies, conducted separately, involved smokers, not because the researchers were looking to make smoking safer, but because smokers show very clear reductions in the ability of blood vessels to change their size in response to changes in blood pressure, a measure of cardiac health called endothelial function.

In one study, conducted at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, 15 smokers and 15 nonsmokers were tested to see how much the size of a blood vessel in the forearm changed when a tourniquet was placed above it. When the smokers were given taurine, an amino acid found in fish, their response was equal to those of the nonsmokers. Vitamin C also improved the response, though not by as much, the article said. The study's lead researcher, Dr. David J. Bouchier-Hayes, said the dose of taurine was the equivalent of that in a serving of almost any fish.

The other study, conducted at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, looked at a drug used to treat gout, called allopurinol, which suppresses an enzyme that contributes to the production of free radicals, chemicals known to damage the circulatory system. Before treatment, the blood vessels of the smokers being studied were less responsive to a change in pressure than those of nonsmokers used as a comparison group.

Both groups were then given a single dose of allopurinol. While it had no change on the vessels of nonsmokers, the response in the smokers improved sharply, even surpassing that of the nonsmokers.

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