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WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins seem to benefit even heart failure patients who have normal cholesterol levels.
That good news comes from a study by Japanese and American researchers in the July 28 online issue of Circulation.
"This is the first prospective study to show that statins have beneficial effects in heart failure in the absence of coronary artery disease or high blood cholesterol," senior author Dr. James K. Liao, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, says in a news release.
Previous research has found statins decrease the incidence of chronic heart failure in people with coronary artery disease and high cholesterol. But the effect of statins on heart failure in people who don't have cholesterol-induced coronary artery disease was unknown.
The study included 51 Japanese patients. They received either 5 milligrams of the statin drug simvastatin for four weeks followed by 10 milligrams of the drug for 10 weeks, or a placebo.
Of the patients taking the statin drug, 39.1 percent have improved heart function, 56.6 percent had no change and 4.3 percent had a decrease in heart function. Among those in the placebo group, 16 percent improved, 72 percent had no change and 12 percent worsened.
The left ventricular fraction, a measure of heart function, rose from 34 percent to 41 percent in the statin group but stayed the same in the placebo group.
"These improvements are significant, given that these patients had only moderate disease and were treated for only 14 weeks. This opens up a new treatment strategy for patients with heart failure, regardless of their cholesterol levels," Liao says.
But larger studies are needed before statins can be recommended to treat patients with this form of chronic heart failure, the researchers say.
More information
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