Benefits of statin drugs continue for years

Scientists in the UK have found that the benefits to the heart from taking statin drugs may last for years and are sustained even after the drugs are stopped.

A research team from Glasgow University in Scotland have found that men who took the statin drug pravastatin for five years had a lower risk of death or heart attack years after they stopped taking the drug.

According to Ian Ford and his colleagues, taking statins for an average of five years provided an ongoing reduction in the risk of coronary events for an additional period of up to ten years.

The Scottish team conducted a study of 6,595 middle-aged men, and found that the risk of heart attack or death from any type of heart disease was 11.8 percent for the pravastatin recipients, compared with 15.5 percent for volunteers who took a placebo for the first five years of the test.

The researchers say the biggest benefit of a 40 percent reduction in the chance of heart attack or heart disease death, was present while the men were taking the drug, but the reduction was still 18 percent in the years after the initial study was completed.

The drug which is now available in generic form was originally marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb as Pravachol; it appears to produce no serious long-term health problems.

The results come from the ongoing assessment of volunteers in the West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study, which was sponsored by the drug company; all the participants had high cholesterol levels but had never had a heart attack.

After the first five years of the study, the patients, 44 percent of whom were smokers, were sent back to their regular doctor.

In the mid-1990s it was not common practice to prescribe cholesterol-lowering drugs to prevent an initial heart attack, and most of the volunteers who had been taking the statins did not continue with them.

The Pfizer statin Lipitor was discovered in the mid-1980s, though it was the fifth statin drug to hit the market it emerged as better than the existing statins and is now by far the world’s best-selling drug.

Statins do more than simply lower cholesterol as they appear to stabilise the lining of the blood vessels, as well as damping down inflammation.

Most heart attacks are triggered by the breaking away from the artery wall of plaques, which then block the blood vessels and starve the heart of blood.

These actions make the drug very effective and work even on those whose cholesterol levels are normal.

The two serious side-effects of stains are the irritation of the liver, and damage to muscle cells, called rhabdomyolysis; but both are rare and of the millions now on statins, very few have suffered such side-effects.

Heart disease remains the world's second biggest killer after cancer.

The research is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.