Simvastatin effective against heart disease
Simvastatin effective against heart disease
JAKARTA (JP): A Scandinavian study has found simvastatin tablets effective in treating patients with coronary heart disease, a foreign professor claims.
"The study shows that long-term treatment with simvastatin is safe and improves survival in coronary heart disease patients," Prof. Tatu Miettinen of the University of Helsinki in Finland said at a symposium on cardiology on Saturday.
The two-day seminar, which was organized by the Indonesian Heart Association, featured a number of cardiologists from the United States, Britain, Germany, Malaysia, Finland and Indonesia.
Tatu said the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study was designed to evaluate the effects of lowering cholesterol with simvastatin on mortality and morbidity in heart disease patients.
He said that in the clinical trial, 4,444 patients with angina vectoris or previous myocardial infarction and serum cholesterol on a lipid-lowering diet were randomly picked for treatment with simvastatin or a placebo.
"The provision of 40 milligrams of simvastatin a day to the patients in a 5.4 year period brings a decrease by 25 percent in total cholesterol and 35 percent in low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and an increase by eight percent in high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, with few adverse effects," he said.
Coronary heart disease is generally caused by eating too much food containing cholesterol, especially LDL cholesterol, he explained.
He said that only eight percent of those who had been given simvastatin tablets failed to get better, while 256 patients in the placebo group died.
Tatu, who also participated in the clinical trial, said that the six year probability of survival in the placebo and simvastatin groups were 87.6 percent and 91.3 percent respectively. Non-cardiovascular causes accounted for 49 deaths in the placebo group and 46 in the simvastatin group.
He said another benefit of simvastatin treatment was a reduction of the risk of undergoing myocardial revascularization procedures. (rms)