Cardiac Benefits to Everolimus
Eisen and colleagues recently reported in The New England Journal of Medicine the results of a randomized, double-blind trial that compared everolimus with azathioprine in 634 recipients of a first heart transplant. They discovered that everolimus significantly reduced the incidence of acute rejection of coronary vasculopathy in these patients.
In the same NEJM issue, Avery penned an excellent article in which he discussed cardiac-allograft vasculopathy.The artwork shown in the figure of his article is superb. It clearly illustrates the difference between coronary atherosclerosis and allograft vasculopathy. The usual atherosclerotic plaque has a focal distribution, whereas coronary vasculopathy has concentric intimal thickening throughout the coronary arteries.
Eisen and colleagues recently reported in The New England Journal of Medicine the results of a randomized, double-blind trial that compared everolimus with azathioprine in 634 recipients of a first heart transplant. They discovered that everolimus significantly reduced the incidence of acute rejection of coronary vasculopathy in these patients.
In the same NEJM issue, Avery penned an excellent article in which he discussed cardiac-allograft vasculopathy.The artwork shown in the figure of his article is superb. It clearly illustrates the difference between coronary atherosclerosis and allograft vasculopathy. The usual atherosclerotic plaque has a focal distribution, whereas coronary vasculopathy has concentric intimal thickening throughout the coronary arteries.