New statin drug reduces heart attack and stroke risk in healthy people

Crestor (Rosuvastatin)

The American Heart Association has published details of a new statin drug – Crestor – which dramatically reduces the number of heart attacks and strokes, even for people without existing high levels of cholesterol in their blood.

The results of drug trials conducted in the United States, were so conclusive that they were prematurely halted in March 2008, just halfway through their planned 4 year term, as the medical profession considered that it would be unethical to continue giving placebos to half the trial patients.

It was discovered that a daily treatment of Crestor, also known as Rosuvastatin, dramatically cut the rate of heart problems and cardiac deaths by an amazing 44 per cent. Crucially, the U.S. study involved those who would not normally be considered at risk of heart problems.

Heart Attack and Stroke reduced dramatically

Heart attacks were cut by 54 per cent, strokes by 48 per cent and the need for angioplasty or heart bypass surgery by 46 per cent among the group on Crestor compared to those taking a placebo, or dummy pill.

Significantly, those taking Crestor, experienced a fifty per cent reduction in their levels of the ‘bad’ cholesterol known as LDL, and were 20 per cent less likely to die from any other cause.

The conclusion from the study, named Jupiter (Justification for the Use of statins in primary prevention), is that taking Statins could reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes for everyone, even those with healthy cholesterol levels. However all the trial patients had high levels of a protein known as hsCRP – high sensitivity C-reactive, which is linked to inflammation of the arteries and heart disease. Now the U.S. researchers want this factor to be considered when deciding who will receive statins.

low cholesterol level is no longer safe

The lead researcher on the Jupiter study, Dr Paul Ridker, director of the Centre for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts said: ‘Half of all heart attacks and strokes occur in men and women with normal cholesterol levels. We’ve been searching for ways to improve detection of risk in those patients. We can no longer assume that a patient with low cholesterol is a safe patient.’

Warnings against high regular statin dosage

However, experts have warned against trying to replicate the effects of Crestor – the newest and most effective statin – by using other statins at higher doses. Professor Martin Cowie, professor of cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, said it was apparent that some statins worked differently from others. He added that ’simply giving patients massive doses of other statins would not necessarily work and could increase the side effects to unacceptable levels’.

Professor Cowie pointed out that Doctors and Cardiologists are under increasing pressure to reduce the drugs bill by putting patients on the cheapest statins. He said: ‘I sympathise with the need to consider costs but you have to balance risks and benefits amid this push to switch patients to generic drugs, but high doses of statins can cause high rates of side effects like muscle pain and weakness’.

In the united Kingdom more than four million British patients regularly take statins to control their cholesterol levels. Eight out of ten use the cheapest generic drug, simvastatin, which costs just a few dollars per month. However, Crestor, which is made by AstraZeneca, costs approximately $40 per month for a 20mg daily dose.