Anti-cholesterol drugs save lives

Wider use of cholesterol-lowering drugs could save 10,000 lives each year in the UK and 50,000 annually worldwide, researchers say today.

A British study shows far more people could benefit from the drugs, called statins, than currently get them. The results are so significant they are likely to revolutionise statin treatment around the world, with implications for hundreds of millions of people with coronary heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Giving an extra 10 million high-risk people statins would save an estimated 50,000 lives a year, the results suggest. Similar numbers would be able to avoid non-fatal heart attacks and strokes.

In the UK, implementing the findings fully would more than triple the number of people benefiting from statins to three million, saving an extra 10,000 a year here. Currently in the UK statins are given to fewer than one in 20 people aged over 40 - mostly men with heart disease or high cholesterol.

Statins reduce the amount of "bad" low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the blood, slowing its production and increasing its removal by the liver. Studies have shown statins also produce modest increases in healthy high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, and cut levels of triglyceride fats, which contribute to heart disease.

The Heart Protection Study (HPS) looked at 20,000 volunteers aged 40 to 80 over an average of five years. It studied the effect of statins on patients for whom the benefits were uncertain. They included women, over-70s, people with narrowed arteries in their legs or a history of stroke, diabetics, and those considered at risk who still had normal or low cholesterol levels.

Professor Rory Collins, from Oxford University's clinical trial service unit, said: "HPS shows unequivocally that statins can produce substantial benefit in a very much wider range of high risk people than had previously been thought.

"If worldwide an extra 10 million people were to go on to statin treatment, this would save thousands of people each week."

Cholesterol-lowering with the drug simvastatin reduced the risk of heart attacks and strokes by at least a third, and lessened the need for surgery and amputations. The death rate from heart disease fell by 18 per cent.

Death from all causes was reduced from 14.7 per cent for volunteers given dummy pills, to 12.9 per cent for those taking the genuine drug.

Professor Peter Sleight, deputy chairman of the HPS steering committee, said: "These findings open the door to treatment for many patients who are currently unlikely to receive a statin in the UK or elsewhere." A 40mg daily dose of simvastatin costs about £1 in the UK.

The findings of the £21 million study are published today in the Lancet medical journal.

However the study also found supplements of vitamins C and E, and beta-carotene, did not lead to significant reductions in the five-year risk of heart attacks, strokes, or cancers.