Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 17, 1994                   TAG: 9410180057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                 LENGTH: Medium

FAMILY'S GENES ATTACK FATAL FAT

The boy's descendants in Limone inherited a genetic defect that protects them from the scourge of Western living - fatty deposits that clog the arteries.

The 38 lucky carriers have a simple mutation in a protein of so-called good cholesterol that lets them eat red meat and butter without artery-clogging deposits. They range in age from the teens to nearly 90. And they have never worried about strokes or heart attacks, because longevity runs in the family.

``They are almost all smokers. They eat like hell, the worst diet,'' said the University of Milan's Dr. Cesare Sirtori.

Ever since Sirtori discovered the mutation, doctors have wondered about harnessing its power to eliminate coronary artery disease.

``Eventually, it is not inconceivable that the gene could be transferred to the liver or other organs of very high-risk people, who could then end up manufacturing it on their own,'' said Dr. Prediman Shah, director of cardiac care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Shah leads a U.S.-Swedish team examining the more immediate potential to reduce the deadly reclogging that occurs after a blocked vessel has been cleared with balloon angioplasty surgery.

In the October issue of the American Heart Association journal Circulation, Shah reports that injections of a genetically engineered version of the protein dramatically reduced the reclogging of rabbits' coronary arteries.

Shah learned about the Limone mutation two years ago while searching for sources of synthetic high-density lipoprotein, HDL, which is cholesterol that might reduce reclogging.

He read that Sirtori stumbled upon a strange form of HDL in 1974 while examining a man with sky-high levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, but no coronary artery disease. Somehow good cholesterol was keeping the bad from wreaking havoc. Through church records in Limone, Sirtori traced the anomaly to Pomaroli and Giovanelli.