I might be reading parts of it wrong, but I think that's a different sort of thing to the research in the article.

Sugar is a very indirect cause of heart attacks, everyone knows that most heart attacks are a culmination of decades of diet and exercise habits. It's still worth researching everything to do with that, but it's pretty low value research because it's hard to draw any actionable conclusions from it other than "eat healthier and exercise", which is already well known.

The research in the article is talking about a direct cause. Bacteria exists on arterial plaque, viral infection triggers bacteria to multiply, something about that process causes the plaque to detach and cause a heart attack. If that ends up being a rock solid cause and effect, even for a subset of heart attacks, that could lead to things like direct prevention (anti-virals before the heart attack happens) or changes in patient management (everyone with artery disease gets put far away from sick patients) that could directly and immediately save a lot of lives.

The post you replied to was saying that the data from the study isn't as strong as the article and headline make it out to be, which is usually the case. For this one though I'm reading that less as "it's a nothingburger" and more as "it's a small interesting result that needs a lot of follow up".

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lithocarpus 2 days ago | parent [-]

While you're not technically wrong, I find this whole approach to be not good.

And actually, if as a lot of science is now suggesting, inflammation and damage due to eating oxidization-prone lipids (aka refined oils) in combination with refined sugar is a big part of the cause of arterial damage and heart disease, that could be easily be the biggest root cause in most of these cases. The bacteria if they even play a causal role at any point, could be a result of previous damage due to diet (and lack of exercise).

The paper's idea of treating heart disease by giving patients antibiotics seems really problematic to me. Destroy your health with poor diet and lack of exercise, and then once you start to feel the effect of this, take antibiotics and destroy your gut health too.

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navigate8310 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

While do do agree with the general premise of your comment, that is, correct the root cause. For some, "eat healthy and exercise", may not be an option, because they are already addicted and overweight. At least, taking anti-biotics could be the very first line of actionable treatment to prevent the bacterial buildup and save their life immediately.

	▲	lithocarpus 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I very strongly disagree. Antibiotics are very dangerous at the individual level in how they mess up the individual's gut bacteria which are crucial for health. Furthermore giving everyone antibiotics as a preventative measure for heart disease complications, given that most Americans are on the spectrum of heart disease (i.e. have hypertension) is a recipe for bacterial resistance and other population problems.
	▲	bluGill 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If you atempt that plan at scale I would expect antibiodic restistant bacteria to develop fast and people soon start dieing younger of what we now think of as minor infections.

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rdedev 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Are there any human randomised control trials that show stuff like vegetable oil cause inflammation? Atleast the ones I've seen show the opposite

https://youtu.be/-xTaAHSFHUU

	▲	lithocarpus 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		No, such human rcts haven't been done. The mechanism for how refined linoleic acid if heated would create higher amounts of free radicals that are known to cause oxidative stress / inflammation is well understood. I agree a large scale rct for this would be great, but I doubt anyone would fund it and if it does get done I'd be surprised if it wasn't designed to meet the biases of the side that funds it.