Drug Combo Clobbers Heart Disease Risk
HealthScoutNews — Using two lipid-lowering medicines reduces multiple risk factors for heart disease.
That finding, from researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, appears in the April 15 issue of the American Journal of Cardiology.
Researchers combined low-dose simvastatin, which targets low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (bad cholesterol), with the drug fenofibrate, which increases high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (good cholesterol).
The study included 20 people with combined hyperlipidemia, a condition characterized by high triglycerides, high LDL cholesterol and low HDL cholesterol.
High LDL is a risk factor for coronary heart disease, and low HDL and high triglycerides also increase the risk.
When they were put on the simvastatin/fenofibrate combination, the study volunteers had a 52 percent reduction in triglycerides, a 23 percent increase in HDL and a 28 percent decrease n LDL.
“This study provides reasonable evidence that a low dose of statin plus fenofibrate is a relatively safe and effective drug combination for treating LDL and several emerging risk factors for coronary heart disease,” principal investigator Dr. Gloria Vega says in a news release.
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