New Benefit from Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs
Cholesterol-lowering drugs are usually prescribed to reduce the risk of heart attacks in middle-aged people. A new study published in The BMJ shows that these medications also seem to help prevent strokes in older people.
The researchers tracked nearly 7,500 French men and women around 74 years old for nine years. The subjects lived in Dijon, Bordeaux and Montpellier and were healthy at the beginning of the study. By the end, the researchers found that individuals taking either statins such as simvastatin or fibrates like fenofibrate to control cholesterol were 30% less likely to have suffered a stroke.
Does the Benefit Outweigh the Risk?
The absolute risk was very low, less than 1 stroke per 200 person years, so it is important to consider whether an older person is able to take the preventive medication without troublesome side effects.
One surprising finding was that there was not a lower risk of heart disease among the older people taking cholesterol-lowering medicines. Since this is what they are supposed to do and why they are prescribed, it was an unexpected result.
