An adjunctive preventive treatment for heart disease and a set of diagnostic tests to detect it: insulin-like growth factor-1 deficiency and cell membrane pathology are an inevitable cause of heart disease.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a preventable disease with high morbidity and mortality. Largely omitted from the efforts at detection and treatment are the contributions of the lungs, the skeletal muscles and the arteries to heart disease pathology. Also omitted are the effects of the age-related decline in insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and the age-related increase in cell membrane pathology. The hypothesis on which this model is based postulates that growing older, over time, necessarily results in pathological changes in the heart, the lungs, the skeletal muscles and the arteries. Additionally, the age-related decline in (IGF-1) that occurs in the otherwise healthy aged population also causes similar pathological changes. The drug portion of the proposed treatment includes the use of the drug acetyl-l-carnitine (ALC) to increase the age-related decreased IGF-1 levels. The drug centrophenoxine (CPH) is used to reverse the age-related pathological changes that inevitably occur in the heart, the lungs, the skeletal muscles and the arteries. A testing procedure is included to improve the detection of heart disease and to monitor the results. It consists of five tests: the monitoring of plasma IGF-1 levels; the monitoring of blood pressure, and in particular elevated systolic blood pressure; the monitoring of blood pressure variability over time; a heart rate recovery time test and a heart rate reserve test. Heart rate reserve is defined as the difference between maximal heart rate and resting heart rate, after treadmill exercise. The changes in test results noted during treatment are an indicator of progress or deterioration in the prevention of heart disease, whatever the case may be.