This is the first in an occasional series of profiles on the researchers working in the Center for Human Nutrition.

It's often said, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." One Roman in America, however, has chosen not to do as Americans do, that is, eat a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet. Dr. Marcello Arca said his wife has helped him maintain healthy eating habits since their arrival from Rome a few years ago. As a result, his blood cholesterol level is about the same as it was when he came to the United States--160 mg/dL. Dr. Arca received his medical degree in 1985 from the University of Rome. After several years of internal-medicine training he wanted to conduct research into the genetic and metabolic cause of hyperlipidemia (high blood fats), so he decided he would go to an institution that had leaders in both genetic and lipid research: UT Southwestern. He left Rome for Dallas to join Dr. Scott Grundy's research group in 1989.

Dr. Grundy, director of the Center for Human Nutrition, encouraged Dr. Arca to focus his attention on the problem of hypercholesterolemia in postmenopausal women. The rise after menopause of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the "bad" cholesterol, contributes to the increase in the number of women who develop heart disease and subsequently suffer heart attacks at older ages. If the cause or causes for this increase in LDL can be found, it may lead to a reduction in the number of heart-attack deaths in women.

Employing a technique extensively used in the Center to study the lipoprotein metabolism in vivo, Dr. Arca began investigating the metabolic causes of high LDL levels in postmenopausal women with hypercholesterolemia. Since LDL metabolism is, at least in part, under genetic control, he also is trying to determine whether genetic causes underlie these metabolic defects. To this end, he is drawing on the expertise of researchers, such as Dr. Helen Hobbs, associate professor of internal medicine, working with Nobel laureates Drs. Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein, whose research helped explain how cholesterol is metabolized by the body. In their lab, he is examining the LDL receptor gene and other genes that control lipid metabolism for mutations that may act to alter LDL metabolism after menopause.

Arca also is involved in a study using low-dose Lovastatin to treat postmenopausal women with elevated cholesterol levels. He anticipates staying one more year at UT Southwestern and then returning to Rome to continue his research. He said that while the average cholesterol level in Italian women is still lower than in American women, the problem of postmenopausal hypercholesterolemia is universal.