The Ministry of Health announced a few weeks ago that it will finance the purchase of Leqvio, dubbed ‘the cholesterol vaccine’. It is a drug developed by Novartis intended for the treatment of those patients who cannot keep their bad cholesterol (LDL) levels below 100 mg/l of blood. We are talking about people who maintain high or very high cholesterol levels, despite taking other medications such as statins, playing sports and having a healthy and balanced diet.
Although it is a subcutaneously administered medication, inclisiran (that is its technical name, not a commercial one) is not a vaccine. Its virtue lies in the fact that, with just two injections a year, it is capable of sustainably reducing LDL levels by up to 50% in patients with cardiovascular diseases, without notable side effects. This is thanks to the use of messenger RNA technology, which the covid vaccines used, although in a different way.
Years before Jonathan Cohen and Helen Hobbs, researchers at Texas Southwestern University, discovered this antidote to high cholesterol, another study had found the PSCK9 gene, a strange mutation that had triggered lethal cases of hypercholesterolemia for members of a french family This was the starting point of the search for the opposite mutation, PCSK9, a gene that maintains LDL levels around 15 mg/dl. The same gene that an aerobics instructor from Dallas and another woman from Zimbabwe shared.
Based on this research, pharmaceutical companies began to work on medications, such as inclisiran, capable of modulating the expression of PSCK9, the gene that increases cholesterol levels. To do this, Leqvio applies messenger RNA technology, which produces the PSCK9 protein (which regulates levels). In this way, the liver’s ability to ‘clean’ excess cholesterol in the blood improves and, therefore, LDL levels are reduced.
Although Cohen and Hobbs owe the discovery of this revolutionary drug to the girl from Dallas, as the Ministry has announced, the so-called ‘cholesterol vaccine’ will be reserved for very specific patients, with high cardiovascular risk. From its effective results, it is easy to guess that inclisiran will be only the first of the drugs available to combat cholesterol that use messenger RNA technology.
In any case, experts emphasize that prevention is the best way to combat hypercholesterolemia. A sedentary lifestyle, smoking or diets with excess fat are the main enemies of this cardiovascular condition.
