Jesus Araujo, director of the Environmental Cardiology of the medical faculty at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), carried out an investigation which showed that smoke from vehicles affects the cholesterol that atrophies the arteries.
This Venezuelan doctor investigated for two weeks, along with other researchers such as Michael Rosenfeld, of the University of Washington, in Seattle, and Fen Yin, first author and researcher in the division of Cardiology of the school of medicine David Geffen of UCLA, the effects of emissions from a diesel engine in laboratory mice and compared them with other rodents that were placed in an environment of pure air in the same period.
“We determined that the animals that were exposed to diesel emissions had oxidation in the lungs that somehow was accompanied by oxidation in the fats that were part of the cholesterol particles that travel in the blood,” said Araujo to the news agency EFE.
“Bad cholesterol or LDL (low density lipoprotein) became badder and good cholesterol or HDL (high-density lipoprotein) lost its protective properties and rather acquired damaging properties,” said the doctor.
The doctor pointed out that other studies have shown that exposure to air pollutants are associated with the increase of heart attacks and stroke incidence.
The results of the research will be published in the print edition of June of the “Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology Journal, “from the American Heart Association.
