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Statins reduce CV events in CAD patients with very low LDL-C

2013-08-31
(Press-News.org) Dr Nakano said: "Many randomised clinical trials, such as Treating to New Targets (TNT) and PROVE IT-TIMI, have shown that aggressive cholesterol lowering with statins improves clinical outcomes in patients with CAD and high LDL-C levels.1,2 But until now it was not known whether aggressive lipid lowering with statins would also benefit CAD patients with very low LDL-C levels."

The current study used the Ibaraki Cardiovascular Assessment Study (ICAS), a registry of 2,238 patients from 12 hospitals in the Ibaraki region of Japan, who between 0 and 1 month underwent percutaneous coronary interventions. Based on serum LDL-C levels at initial presentation participants were classified into three groups: very low (101 mg/dl, n= 1,355). Decisions of whether to prescribe statins or not, as well as the type and dose, were left to the discretion of treating physicians.

Patients were followed up for a maximum of 3 years. The efficacy of statin treatment was analysed on the composite outcome of Major Cardiovascular Events (MACE), defined as all cause mortality, non-fatal myocardial infarction and non-fatal stroke.

Statins were prescribed in 68% of patients (143) with very low LDL-C, 67% of patients (450) with low LDL-C and 67% of patients (913) with high LDL-C. A total of 204 patients experienced MACE during the median follow-up of 404 days.

The results of a Kaplan-Meier estimate show that three years of statin treatment produced significant reductions in the incidence of MACE in all three groups (p END


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[Press-News.org] Statins reduce CV events in CAD patients with very low LDL-C