(1898 - 1977)
Abogado y escritor. Brillante intelectual marxista y luchador social. Aportó valiosas obras como poeta, latinoamericanista y martiano. El Consejo Mundial de la Paz le otorgó las Medallas de Plata y de Oro Joliot Curie, en 1959 y 1966, respectivamente.
Biomedical Sciences
1996 | Policosanol’s platelet anti-additive effect
Main executives entity: National Center for Scientific Research (CNIC)
Main author: María de Lourdes Arruzazabala
Summary: Platelets play an important role in thrombosis and in atherogenesis, and platelet hyperreactivity can contribute to these complications. The clinical impact on morbimortality is not exclusive of hypolipemia's drugs, since it has been demonstrated that the administration of antiplatelet agents diminishes significantly morbimortality for vascular causes. It has been suggested that thromboxane formation A2 (TxA2) and platelet hyperreactivity can be associated to hypercholesterolemia. This way, practically all the hypolipemic agents have been evaluated regarding their possible effects on platelet function. However, only simvastatin has shown effects in this sense. Policosanol is a natural mixture of superior aliphatic alcohols from sugar cane, isolated and purified.The oral treatment with policosanol reduces the seric levels of cholesterol in experimental models, healthy volunteers and patients with hypercholesterolemia type II primary and secondary. Preclinical studies have also demonstrated that policosanol has antiplatelet, antithrombotic and antiischemic effect. This study summarizes the results of eight double-blind randomized clinical trials carried out in healthy volunteers and patients with hypercholesterolemia type II. It was demonstrated in all these studies that policosanol, in the same doses in which it manifests its hypolipemiant effect, inhibits the induced platelet aggregation "ex vivo" by arachidonic acid, epinephrine, collagen and ADP. It was also observed in one of these studies that policosanol inhibits the formation of TxA2 induced by collagen, which partially explains the mechanism of action of this antiplatelet effect. All the mentioned aspects indicate that this new medicament not only has an effect to reduce cholesterol but also inhibits platelet aggregation.
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