Currently, the drug is used only in conjunction with bypass surgery. It is not known how much of the vessel growth is due to surgery or to F.G.F. 1. Development of a drug or technique that grows blood vessels without bypass surgery is especially critical, since many patients have arteries that are too narrow for surgery. In Boston and New York, doctors are testing different methods for growing blood vessels in diseased hearts, each using a form of gene therapy. Medical researchers have been searching for a way to grow blood vessels since the 1920s.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in both Texas and the nation.
Heart disease kills about 42,000 Texans each year, with a death rate of 223.5 per 100,000 people in 1995. Many of today's medicines affect more than just the consumer's health. Chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics and hormones have also turned up in sources of drinking water. In Las Vegas, researchers found flowing into Lake Mead concentrations of estradiol, the primary female sex hormone, as well as evidence of a synthetic hormone found in birth control pills. Researchers fear, though, that some organisms will develop a resistance to the medicines in the water.