Read this story in the Daily Telegraph, a major UK newspaper, and you would be forgiven if you thought that this piece reports a new treatment for patients with coronary artery disease and that this treatment has been compared in a randomised controlled trial with statins and that most of the work was done in Leicester, UK.
In actual fact, this story is based on this paper published very recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This was a study using knock out mice and used various models of ischaemia reperfusion to demonstrate that inhibition of mannan-binding lectin-associated serine protease-2 (Masp2) is protective after an ischaemic insult. The authors come from all over the world and many have shares in the Seattle based start up company that is trying to commercially produce the monoclonal antibody that inhibits this enzyme. In the most optimistic best case scenario, a treatment that benefits humans will not be available for 5 to 10 years at least and will probably be unavailable to most NHS patients . Treatments that have reduced the size of myocardial infarcts in mice are plentiful. Most however have come and gone (mice are just not human being one very important reason). I really hope that this works but the odds suggest this treatment will go the same way and disappear forever into the sunset. Professor Wilhelm Schwaeble certainly seems to have done a fine job selling the story. This however is no excuse for this example of shoddy journalism.
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