Method of treating the syndrome of coronary heart disease risk factors in humans

Abstract

The invention provides an improved method of treating a human suffering from one or more conditions included within the Coronary Heart Disease Risk Factor (CHDRF) syndrome. The method includes administering, by a pharmaceutically effective mode, a drug composition having an opioidergic agent including an opiate antagonist, opiate having μ-agonist activity or combination thereof, and an insulin secretagogue.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION [0001] This application is a continuation-in-part of and claims priority to U.S. Application No. 09 / 639,061 filed on Aug. 15, 2000.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] Coronary Heart Disease Risk Factors (CHDRFs) are major causes of death in the industrialized world. CHD risk factors include Type 2 Diabetes (and its precursor, Impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT)), hyperlipidemia or dyslipidemia, overweight, obesity and essential hypertension, i.e., a form of hypertension that occurs without a discoverable organic cause. The CHDRF syndrome may, therefore, be defined as a group of interrelated disorders: Type 2 Diabetes, IGT, Dyslipidemia, Overweight, Obesity and essential hypertension. It has also become apparent that Type 2 Diabetes, by itself, represents a syndrome of various, in part sequential, disease states which interact with other components of the CHDRF syndrome. However, the exact interrelationships between the disease states that make up t...

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Problems solved by technology

However, the exact interrelationships between the disease states that make up these syndromes is not fully understood.

Accordingly, in some patients lipid metabolism problems may predominate, while in others, carbohydrate metabolism problems may be predominant.

Therapeutic modalities for lowering any one of the lipid fractions in dyslipidemia have not proven capable of correcting the entire hyperlipidemic complex with a single therapeutic agent.

As a result, IR may become a permanent metabolic burden and, with additional diabetogenic factors, such as cortisol, may accelerate progressive increases in hepatic gluconeogenesis (GNG) and glucose production (GP).

Lipid metabolism is rather complex.

While it is clear that dyslipidemia is associated with the development of coronary heart disease, there is no clear understanding of the pathogenic causes and pathways leading up to the manifestation of the various lipid disorders.

Obesity is a disease of major proportions and severe economic consequences.

Obesity is second only to cigarette smoking as a preventable cause of premature death, and its complications add in excess of $100 billion to U.S. health care costs.

Obesity can not be treated effectively by willpower alone, and currently available pharmaceutical drugs are only marginally effective.

Moreover, several obesity drugs have recently been withdrawn from the market because of their risk of potentially fatal side-effects, e.g. pulmonary hypertension or heart defects in connection with dexfenfluramine, fenfluramine or phentermine.

Despite the recognized interaction between the various CHD risk factors, the pharmaceutical modalities currently available to treat the symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes generally have had no beneficial effect on hyper- or dyslipidemia; in fact, some of the medicines widely used to treat Type 2 Diabetes, e.g. sulfonylureas, tend to increase hyperlipidemia and may, therefore, further contribute to overweight and obesity, thereby increasing the CHD risk.

Moreover, no single pharmaceutical agent has been able to treat and correct the entire complex of hyper- or dyslipidemia.

On the other hand, drugs like lovastatin lower the levels of both total and low density lipoprotein cholesterol, while only slightly increasing the level of high density lipoprotein cholesterol.

However, these drugs have no effect on FFA and little or no effect on TG levels.

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