Benefits of statins
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine Saturday, was conducted over seven years and involved some 12,000 patients from 21 countries. Led by McMasters University in Canada, it also involved research teams from other countries.
Statins reduce the chance of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks or strokes, by 25 percent, and do so across a broad range of patients, the study found. Patients admitted into the study did not have clinical heart disease but were determined to have an intermediate risk of developing it (meaning they were men over 55, women over 60 and had at least one risk factor, such as high-blood pressure, obesity or they were smokers.
The conclusion of the study on statins said that “Treatment with rosuvastatin at a dose of 10 mg per day resulted in a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular events than placebo in an intermediate-risk, ethnically diverse population without cardiovascular disease.”
HOPE-3 Clinical Trials
There were other results of ‘The HOPE-3 Clinical Trials’ that were positive. Drugs to control hypertension (anti-hypertensives) did not lower risk of heart disease in the overall population (those without high-blood pressure) but those same medications did reduce the risk in patients with high-blood pressure, the study found.
And giving statins and anti-hypertensives to patients with an intermediate risk of heart disease and with high-blood pressure resulted in a 40 percent drop in risk of heart attack or stroke.
Dr. Sonia Anand, a researcher at McMaster, said that treating hearth disease should now be “much more simple based on these results.”
The HOPE 3 Clinical study received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and AstraZeneca. The results are being presented this weekend at the 2016 American College of Cardiology (ACC) Scientific Session and Expo in Chicago this weekend.
