Using Statins To Lower Cholesterol May Be More Beneficial Way To Prevent Heart Attack And Stroke

Using Statins To Lower Cholesterol May Be More Beneficial Way To Prevent Heart Attack And Stroke.
Broader use of cholesterol-lowering statins may be a cost-effective velocity to block mettle corrosion and stroke, US researchers suggest. In the study, published online Sept 27, 2010 in the tabloid Circulation viagra. The researchers also found that screening for pongy consciousness C-reactive protein (CRP) to label patients who may benefit from statin therapy is only cost-effective in certain cases.

Elevated levels of CRP specify inflammation and suggest an increased chance for heart attack and stroke. Currently, statin therapy is recommended for high-risk patients - those with a 20 percent or greater peril of some classification of cardiovascular event within the next 10 years.

But statins may also promote people with a lower risk, according to Dr Mark Hlatky, professor of haleness research and policy and of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif, and colleagues. Hlatky's troupe set out to arbitrate the cost-effectiveness of three statin cure approaches in patients with normal cholesterol levels and no evidence of empathy disease or diabetes: following current guidelines; conducting CRP screening in patients who don't run across current statin curing guidelines and offering statins to those with elevated CRP levels; and providing statin remedial programme based on a patient's cardiovascular endanger alone, with no CRP testing.

The researchers analyzed which of the three approaches met the non-specifically accepted cost-effectiveness threshold of no more than $50000 per quality-adjusted life-year. They found that statin psychoanalysis based on cardiovascular gamble alone, without CRP testing, was the most cost-effective strategy.

Initiating statin remedying at lower risk levels - without CRP testing - "would further ameliorate clinical outcomes at pleasant cost, making it the optimally cost-effective strategy in our analysis," the researchers wrote in a university despatch release. "Ideally, a marker would explain us who will benefit from drug treatment and who will not," Hlatky spiked out in the release. "If a test could give us that information, it would be very cost-effective antivert. But there's not high-minded evidence yet that CRP, or any other test, works that well".