TUESDAY, Sept. 3, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Aggressive drug therapy to lower cholesterol levels after a heart attack can guard against stroke.
So says a study in today's online issue of Circulation.
The study found that heart attack patients who underwent intensive drug therapy to lower their cholesterol in the four months after their heart attack or other "coronary event" had about half the risk of stroke than heart attack patients who didn't receive the drugs.
Researchers analyzed data from 3,086 people who had suffered a heart attack or chest pain between May 1997 and September 1999. The patients were randomly assigned to take the drug atorvastatin or a placebo within four days of being hospitalized.
During the four months following hospitalization, 36 of the people had 38 strokes. They included 12 taking atorvastatin and 24 taking the placebo. Three people in the drug group and two in the placebo group had fatal strokes.
"An estimated 1 million to 2 million people a year suffer from acute coronary syndrome in the United States alone. So if these results are confirmed in future studies, an absolute reduction of stroke of this order means that many strokes would be prevented," says study author Dr. David D. Waters.
Waters is chief of the division of cardiology at San Francisco General Hospital and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.
More information
To learn more about atorvastatin, visit the National Library of Medicine.
