Statins prevent heart attacks in people with normal cholesterol levels from medicineworld.org

Statins prevent heart attacks in people with normal cholesterol levels

Cholesterol-lowering statins can also reduce inflammation that causes heart disease and have the potential to prevent tens of thousands of heart attacks each year in patients with normal cholesterol levels, scientists reported Sunday.

In a study of nearly 18,000 people with normal cholesterol levels, the drug rosuvastatin produced a 54% reduction in heart attacks, a 48% reduction in strokes, a 46% reduction in the need for angioplasty or bypass surgery and a 20% reduction in deaths compared with a placebo, scientists said at a New Orleans meeting of the American Heart Assn.

The effects were so dramatic that the planned four-year study was halted after nearly two years.

Statins prevent heart attacks in people with normal cholesterol levels

The findings "really change what we are going to do in the future," said Dr. W. Douglas Weaver of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, president of the American College of Cardiology. "This targets a patient group that normally would not be screened or treated to prevent cardiovascular disease".

About half of heart attacks occur in patients who do not have high cholesterol levels.

Posted by: Daniel

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Cholesterol-lowering statins can also reduce inflammation that causes heart disease and have the potential to prevent tens of thousands of heart attacks each year in patients with normal cholesterol levels, scientists reported Sunday. In a study of nearly 18,000 people with normal cholesterol levels, the drug rosuvastatin produced a 54% reduction in heart attacks, a 48% reduction in strokes, a 46% reduction in the need for angioplasty or bypass surgery and a 20% reduction in deaths compared with a placebo, scientists said at a New Orleans meeting of the American Heart Assn.


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