Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 17, 1994 TAG: 9411170128
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: DALLAS LENGTH: Medium
The study found that the drug simvastatin lowered the chance of dying by 30 percent during five years of treatment following heart attacks and angina chest pain.
Experts said the work could have a profound effect on the way doctors treat heart trouble.
``This is a landmark study in the history of medicine,'' said Dr. Joseph Goldstein of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who shared the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1985 for cholesterol research.
Four similar cholesterol-lowering drugs are available. But many physicians are reluctant to prescribe them because there had been no clear proof until now that they help people live longer.
The latest evidence that they work comes from a study conducted in Scandinavia. It was released Wednesday at a meeting of the American Heart Association and is to be published in the British medical journal Lancet.
The study does not answer the larger question about the use of these medicines in outwardly healthy people. Some doctors prescribe them to people who have high cholesterol levels but no signs of heart disease, and there is still no evidence that the medicine helps them live longer.
The study was conducted on 4,444 men and women at 94 hospitals in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. It was financed by Merck & Co., the drug company that makes simvastatin.
The volunteers were randomly assigned to take simvastatin or dummy pills. Among the key findings after five years of follow-up:
The overall risk of death was 30 percent lower in the group that took simvastatin, and their risk of dying from heart disease was 42 percent lower.
256 patients in the placebo group died, compared with 182 in the simvastatin group.
The need for coronary bypass operations and angioplasty was 37 percent lower in the treated group.
``Cholesterol lowering with this powerful drug prolongs life,'' said the study's director, Dr. Terje Pedersen of Aker Hospital in Oslo, Norway.
When the study began, the patients' cholesterol levels were mildly elevated. They ranged from 212 to 309. After taking the drug, their cholesterol fell by 25 percent. However, their levels of HDL, the good form of cholesterol that protects against heart disease, rose 8 percent.
Currently, about one-quarter of heart patients in the United States are taking cholesterol-lowering drugs. Several experts said they expect this to increase substantially as the result of the latest study.
Dr. K. Lance Gould of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston said he would recommend cholesterol-lowering drugs to all his heart patients with elevated cholesterol.
He predicted that treatment this way could reduce the need for bypass surgery and angioplasty.
``This could have a tremendous economic impact,'' he said.
Treatment with simvastatin and similar drugs costs between $1,000 and $2,000 per year, depending on the brand and dose used.
by CNB