THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 16, 1995 TAG: 9511160263
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Researchers have shown for the first time that one of the potent new cholesterol-lowering drugs can prevent heart attacks and coronary deaths in apparently healthy men with elevated cholesterol levels. The finding is applicable to at least one-quarter of American men.
Most previous studies of cholesterol-lowering drugs have involved people with established heart disease, and those that involved healthy people did not show a decrease in mortality. It has also not yet been shown that women with elevated cholesterol levels and no previous heart disease would benefit from the drug as men did, but earlier studies suggest they would.
``The benefits of reducing cholesterol are now established beyond any reasonable doubt,'' Dr. Terje R. Pedersen of Aker Hospital in Oslo, Norway, wrote in today's New England Journal of Medicine, where the study was published.
The findings were also presented Wednesday at the American Heart Association's scientific meeting in Anaheim, Calif.
The study, conducted among 6,595 ostensibly healthy men aged 45 through 64 in Scotland, showed that over five years those treated with the cholesterol-lowering drug pravastatin suffered 31 percent fewer nonfatal heart attacks and at least 28 percent fewer deaths from heart disease than a comparable group of men who received a placebo.
The benefits of the drug began to be apparent after just six months of treatment, the Scottish team reported.
Both the treatment and the placebo groups were given dietary advice geared to lowering their cholesterol levels, which averaged 272 milligrams per deciliter of blood serum, including at least 155 milligrams of harmful low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, cholesterol.
LDL cholesterol is the form that clogs arteries, and one in four American men have LDL levels that are 155 or higher.
In the study, pravastatin lowered total cholesterol by an average of 20 percent and LDL cholesterol by 26 percent, and raised the protective high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, cholesterol, by 5 percent.
In previous studies, pravastatin had been shown to reduce the risk of heart attack by 62 percent in patients with high cholesterol who already had heart disease.
``We can now say with confidence that pravastatin reduces the risk of heart attack and death in a broad range of people, not just those with established heart disease but also among those who are at risk for their first heart attack,'' said James Shepherd of the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow, the study's principal investigator.
The study, called the West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Study, was supported by a grant from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which makes pravastatin and sells it under the name Pravachol.
The drug is one of a relatively new class of cholesterol-lowering compounds called statins that work by inhibiting the production of cholesterol in the body, mainly by the liver.
Although it has not yet been shown that women with elevated cholesterol levels and no previous heart disease would benefit from taking a statin drug, a Scandinavian trial of a statin drug called simvastatin and an earlier study of lovastatin (sold as Mevacor by Merck), showed that men and women who had heart disease responded in the same way to these drugs.
Researchers say these findings suggest that apparently healthy women with high cholesterol levels might get the same benefits from one of the statins as experienced by the men in the Scottish trial.
In an editorial in today's journal, Pedersen noted that the statin medications are expensive - costing about $800 a year to treat each person - and that ``it is therefore important to look for alternative methods of lowering cholesterol.'' MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The New York Times and The
Associated Press.
by CNB