News Section | Cardiovascular / Cardiology
Cholesterol lowering drugs statins are quite safe in any case, finds study
A new study has found that first few months of starting cholesterol-lowering drugs statins can still reduce the likelihood of severe chest pain when the risk of cardiovascular events is the highest.
“Our findings suggest that there probably is a benefit with statin treatment early on, although it is small, and we know that it accumulates with time. And patients can be assured that serious side effects are very rare,” said Matthias Briel, M.D, an assistant professor at McMaster University, in Ontario, Canada, and senior review author.
For the review, the authors pooled data from 18 randomized controlled trials on 14,303 patients, ages 53 to 69 and mostly male, who had been hospitalized for acute coronary syndrome.
Researchers assigned patients, who had not been taking statins previously, to groups who began treatment with one of these drugs within 14 days of admission to the hospital, or underwent treatment with placebo or usual care.
The reviewers found no statistically significant difference in the combined rates of death, heart attack or stroke one month or four months later, between patients given statins and those who received placebo or standard care.
However, patients on statins appeared slightly less likely to die or have heart attacks or strokes during this time.
They were also found less likely to suffer episodes of unstable angina four months after treatment began.
The study was recently published in The Cochrane Library, a publication of the Cochrane Collaboration.
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