The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7429 p661
2 December 2006

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Statins used for CV primary prevention reduce morbidity

Use of statins for people without cardiovascular disease (primary prevention) offers a reduction in major coronary and cerebrovascular events, researchers have found. But their meta-analysis failed to reveal a reduction in mortality.

In their analysis published this week (Archives of Internal Medicine 2006;166:2307) researchers looked at seven trials involving 42,848 patients (of whom 90 per cent had no history of cardiovascular disease) and found that statin therapy decreased the relative risk of major coronary events by 29.2 per cent (95 per cent confidence interval 16.7–39.8; P<0.001), of major cerebrovascular events by 14.4 per cent (2.8–24.6; P=0.02) and of revascularisation procedures by 33.8 per cent (19.6–45.5; P<0.001) over a mean follow-up of 4.3 years.

The relative risk of both overall death and death due to coronary heart disease was not significantly reduced. The authors say that a reduction in mortality with statin therapy was not observed “because of the relatively low risk of mortality in this patient population and insufficient length of follow-up”.