Regular use of statins can prevent heart attack, stroke, says new study |
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Wed, 28 Sep 2005 00:35
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LONDON: Statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs, can be effective in controlling diabetes and preventing a heart attack or a stroke even in persons with normal cholesterol levels, according to a new study.
Dr Colin Baigent, an epidemiologist at the Medical Research Council at Oxford, who coordinated the study, said the key thing is to identify people who are at risk of coronary heart disease or stroke and treat them with drugs that reduce the LDL cholesterol. This could eventually reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke. The research team, drawn from the Medical Research Council and the Clinical Research Centre at the University of Sydney, went on to suggest that taking statins daily can cut the risk of a heart attack or stroke by about a third. The findings are reported in the online edition of the Lancet. The study covered more than 90,000 patients and used 14 randomised statins.
Statins cut down the cholesterol by inhibiting an enzyme that controls LDL production.
People with higher cholesterol level, who are smokers, and who suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, are at higher risk of a heart attack. While benefits from use of statins in the patients covered under the study started showing in the first year itself, these were the greatest in those in whom the cholesterol levels fell the farthest.
Another study, covering U.S. army veterans and published in Archives of Internal Medicine, finds that use of statins by elderly men reduced the risk of bone fractures by a third.
In the U.K. statins are available as over the counter drugs, but there is a tendency among doctors to prescribe the drug only for those people with high cholesterol levels.
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