Statins

OBJECTIVES: Combination therapy may help high-risk patients achieve low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) goals. Impact of rosuvastatin 10 or 20 mg plus ezetimibe 10 mg (RSV10/EZE10 and RSV20/EZE10) has not been fully characterized previously. GRAVITY (NCT00525824) compared efficacy, safety and effect on biomarkers of RSV10/EZE10 and RSV20/EZE10 vs. simvastatin 40 mg and 80 mg plus EZE10 (SIM40/EZE10 and SIM80/EZE10) in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) or CHD risk equivalent...

BACKGROUND: Systematic data on discontinuation of statins in routine practice of medicine are limited. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the reasons for statin discontinuation and the role of statin-related events (clinical events or symptoms believed to have been caused by statins) in routine care settings. DESIGN: A retrospective cohort study. SETTING: Practices affiliated with Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston...

Cerebral malaria (CM) is the most severe manifestation of Plasmodium falciparum infection in children and non-immune adults. Previous work has documented a persistent cognitive impairment in children who survive an episode of CM that is mimicked in animal models of the disease. Potential therapeutic interventions for this complication have not been investigated, and are urgently needed. HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins) are widely prescribed for cardiovascular diseases. In addition to their effects on the inhibition of cholesterol synthesis, statins have pleiotropic immunomodulatory activities...

BACKGROUND: In view of evidence that statin therapy increases risk of diabetes, the balance of benefit and risk of these drugs in primary prevention has become controversial. We undertook an analysis of participants from the JUPITER trial to address the balance of vascular benefits and diabetes hazard of statin use. METHODS: In the randomised, double-blind JUPITER trial, 17,603 men and women without previous cardiovascular disease or diabetes were randomly assigned to rosuvastatin 20 mg or placebo and followed up for up to 5 years for the primary endpoint (myocardial infarction, stroke, admission to hospital for unstable angina, arterial revascularisation, or cardiovascular death) and the protocol-prespecified secondary endpoints of venous thromboembolism, all-cause mortality, and incident physician-reported diabetes...

BACKGROUND: Postoperative delirium after elective surgery is frequent and potentially serious. We sought to determine whether the use of statin medications was associated with a higher risk of postoperative delirium than other medications that do not alter microvascular autoregulation. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort analysis of 284 158 consecutive patients in Ontario aged 65 years and older who were admitted for elective surgery. We identified exposure to statins from outpatient pharmacy records before admission...

Statins are an efficacious and well-tolerated class of lipid-altering agents that have been shown to reduce the risk of initial and recurrent cardiovascular events. However, cerivastatin was withdrawn from the world market because of its potential for severe myotoxic effects. Since the benefits of statin treatment outweigh the small risk of adverse events, statins remain the first-line therapy for lipid lowering and preventing atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases. The risk of myopathy may be minimized with the appropriate choice of agent and by identifying patients at risk of myotoxic effects...

The aim of this article is to examine the benefit-risk profile of rosuvastatin at doses of 10 to 40 mg. In dyslipidemic patients, rosuvastatin produced markedly greater reductions in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and equivalent or greater improvements in various lipid measures, including high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, non-HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides when compared with atorvastatin, simvastatin, and pravastatin. In addition, rosuvastatin is more effective than these statins in allowing patients to reach National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) III and Joint European Societies LDL cholesterol goals...