Wonder drug hope for heart patients

Published: Monday, 10 November 2008, 9:39AM

People at risk of heart attacks or strokes could be helped by a new wonder drug after a trial was so successful it was stopped early.

Tests show cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor will even help apparently healthy people with low cholesterol who suffer from inflammation of the arteries due to high concentrations of an inflammation protein.

Under normal circumstances, the patients would not be considered at risk of suffering a heart attack, stroke, or dying from a heart-related cause.

After one of the largest trial ever conducted, it was discovered the statin, also known as rosuvastatin, slashes the rate of heart attack risk by 54 per cent and stroke by 48 per cent.

The combined risk of heart attack, stroke and heart-related death fell by by 47 per cent, as did the odds of undergoing surgical procedures.

Because the benefits of taking the drug were so clear, an independent monitoring board halted the trial more than six months early last March.

A total of 18,000 patients, recruited from 26 countries, were typically monitored for 1.9 years instead of three and a half as originally planned.

The researchers, led by Dr Paul Ridker, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, US, found Rosuvastatin was "highly effective" at reducing levels both of cholesterol and C-reactive protein.

They said: "We hope the data presented here spur the further development of targeted anti-inflammatory drugs as potential vascular (blood vessel) therapeutic agents and lead to innovative trials that can directly address whether the inhibition of agents other than statins can reduce rates of vascular events.

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