Statin increase `will save lives`
Baku, November 13 (AZERTAC). Raising the dose of cholesterol-lowering drugs could prevent many more heart attacks and strokes, say researchers.
UK and Australian teams compared a standard statin treatment with a more intensive therapy, publishing results in the Lancet medical journal. They concluded that higher doses cut heart attacks and deaths by 13%. Experts warned that a bigger dose of the most popular statin could produce many more cases of side effects. Statins cut levels of so-called "bad" LDL cholesterol, and the risk of heart attacks and strokes in higher risk patients.
Almost two million people in the UK are prescribed them, and one type is even available over the counter at pharmacies to patients assessed as at "moderate" cardiovascular risk. Some studies have suggested that even greater benefits could be achieved if bigger doses of the drug were prescribed. The two studies in the Lancet were carried out at the universities of Oxford and Sydney, and pooled the results of dozens of other trials to give a more reliable verdict on the likely benefits and risks of doing this.
In the first study, when a standard statin regime was compared to an "intensive" regime, further drops in LDL cholesterol levels were produced. In turn, there was a 15% further reduction in "major vascular events" - which included a 13% drop in heart deaths and non-fatal heart attacks, 19% fewer operations to treat heart disease, and a fall of 16% in the number of strokes. The other study also revealed falls in LDL cholesterol and "vascular events".
