Statins May Reduce Blood Clots, Heart Attacks
Statin drugs, used by millions to reduce cholesterol levels and avoid heart disease, can reduce the possibility of blood clots that can form in the legs or lungs, a huge study announced on Sunday.
The study gives a new motive for those with regular cholesterol to think about taking Crestor, Lipitor and Zocor, doctors’ state.
It was shown that Crestor reduced about half the chances of blood clots in those with low cholesterol but who had high inflammation. The study also showed that Crestor considerably reduced chances for heart attacks, death and stroke.
"It might make some people who are on the fence decide to go on statins," even though blood-clot avoidance is not the goal of the drug, noted Dr. Mark Hlatky, a Stanford University cardiologist who did not participate in the study.
Results were announced Sunday at the American College of Cardiology conference and published by the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study was lead by Robert Glynn and Dr. Paul Ridker of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Ridker is also one of the co-inventors of a patent of the check for high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or CRP.
Researchers at random allocated 17,802 people with high CRP and high cholesterol (below 130), to take either placebos or Crestor, a statin prepared by British-based AstraZeneca PLC.
Thirty four of the adults taking Crestor and 60 others had a venous thromboembolism: a life-threatening blood clot that forms in the leg. Hundred of thousands of Americans have these kinds of clots each year, resulting in 100,000 deaths.
However, more Americans die from heart attacks. Quite a few doctors are not comfortable with using statins in people who have normal cholesterol because so many would have to take it.
"I don’t know that it changes the big picture very much,” Hlatky said. "Where do you draw the line? Are we giving it to 10-year-old kids that are fat?"
Many physicians think that other statins would be beneficial to their patients, even though Crestor is the strongest kind of statin. Those taking Crestor can develop an uncommon but severe muscle problem, and the consumer group Public Citizen is completely against it, believing that there are safer substitutions.
Many doctors continue to be unenthusiastic about further CRP testing and the use of statins by their patients. Others inquired as to why so few people in the study were taking other treatments to avoid heart problems.
"If more of them were on aspirin, you would have less benefit from the statin," said Dr. Thomas Pearson of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Feeling differently, Dr. James Stein of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said that the CRP study convinced him that his patients had to take a statin drug.
"There are very few times you can say to a patient, ‘this medicine is going to keep you alive.’ We should try not to pick apart studies that save lives," Stein said.
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