• SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This gene is already targeted by injected drugs but they are very expensive.

    “PCSK9 has medical importance because it acts in lipoprotein homeostasis. Agents that block PCSK9 can lower LDL particle concentrations. The first two PCSK9 inhibitors, alirocumab and evolocumab, were approved as once every two week injections, by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2015 for lowering LDL-particle concentrations when statins and other drugs were not sufficiently effective or poorly tolerated. The cost of these new medications, as of 2015, was $14,000 per year at full retail; judged of unclear cost effectiveness by some.”

  • DrAnthony@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I’d love to see the health outcomes of this sort of approach in general. One thing that has always irked me though is that we don’t directly test for cholesterol, we test for the expression of cholesterol carrier protein, and as far I know, don’t distinguish Apo versus Holo. Just presuming that expression scales linearly with cholesterol levels with no deviations for genetics (among other factors) just feels like an enormous leap of faith.