One of the biggest trials of 2017 was CANTOS (Canakinumab Anti-inflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Study), which showed that a drug targeting inflammation could reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in well-treated patients with a previous myocardial infarction and signs of excess inflammation.1 Importantly, the benefit of the treatment was independent of any lipid-level lowering. The results might seem unsurprising, given our burgeoning understanding of the important role of chronic inflammation in cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and a myriad of other conditions. But while many have assumed that inflammation is causal in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, until CANTOS the inflammatory hypothesis of atherothrombosis was in fact just a theory, with no clinical evidence to show causality and no effective treatment.
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