Nicholls Stephen J, Sipahi Ilke, Schoenhagen Paul, Crowe Tim, Tuzcu E Murat, Nissen Steven E
Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44195, USA.
Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2006 Jun;5(6):485-92. doi: 10.1038/nrd2040. Epub 2006 May 12.
The background use of a number of established therapies presents a key challenge for the development of novel anti-atherosclerotic agents: how to predict potential efficacy before the completion of long-term trials with endpoints such as mortality. This challenge has stimulated the search to develop intermediate measures of efficacy. Recent advances now allow intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) to provide an accurate assessment of atheroma accumulation within the arterial wall. Here we describe how IVUS can be applied to the serial assessment of atheroma burden in response to treatment with a range of anti-atherosclerotic strategies, which has resulted in its emergence as a key technology in the evaluation and approval of novel drugs.
如何在以死亡率等为终点的长期试验完成之前预测潜在疗效。这一挑战促使人们寻求开发疗效的中间衡量指标。最近的进展使得血管内超声（IVUS）能够准确评估动脉壁内动脉粥样硬化斑块的堆积情况。在此，我们描述了IVUS如何应用于一系列抗动脉粥样硬化策略治疗后动脉粥样硬化负担的连续评估，这使得IVUS成为新药评估和审批中的一项关键技术。
