Statin News and Research

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Statins are drugs used to lower cholesterol. Your body needs some cholesterol to work properly. But if you have too much in your blood, it can stick to the walls of your arteries, narrowing or even blocking them.

Calcified plaque in the arteries better predicts future heart attacks than strokes

The amount of calcified plaque in the heart's arteries is a better predictor of future heart attacks than of strokes, with similar findings across sex and racial groups, according to new research from UT Southwestern.

18 Aug 2020

Food-based approach reduces LDL cholesterol levels, offers healthcare cost savings

A new study is the first to show a food-based approach using clinically-proven diet interventions to lower cholesterol levels, such as Step One Foods®, provides significant healthcare cost savings.

13 Aug 2020

UArizona researcher aims to deliver statins effectively into the brain of stroke patients

Every year in the United States, about 800,000 people experience a stroke. Many are left with neurological complications such as paralysis on one side of the body, speech and language problems, vision issues, behavioral changes, and memory loss.

6 Aug 2020

Targeting LDL cholesterol to reduce heart disease risk now questioned

For many years, health experts have warned that high levels of bad cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) are critical drivers for the development of cardiovascular disease. Now, a new study claims that decades of research have failed to show benefit of targeting the bad cholesterol to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

4 Aug 2020

New study helps identify patients at higher risk of statin-related myopathy

Statins are prescribed to millions of people worldwide to reduce their risks of suffering heart attacks and strokes.

25 Jul 2020

Selective statins may reduce SARS-CoV-2 cell entry and inhibit infection

Statins are a class of drugs often used to control high cholesterol levels in obesity. Now, a study published on the preprint server medRxiv* in July 2020 suggests that statins do not aggravate the risk of COVID-19 infection and may have a small beneficial effect in some cases.

16 Jul 2020

Coronary calcium scoring can help doctors make the right recommendation about statin therapy

Your doctor tells you that you need a statin to lower your cholesterol and reduce your heart attack risk. You don't like taking medicine and your friend tells you that he had achy muscles after he started a statin. You wonder if you should listen to your doctor or go without the medicine.

6 Jul 2020

Study examines statin use among nursing home residents nearing the end of life

Cardiovascular disease (also called heart disease) is one of the most common medical conditions older adults face. In nursing homes, almost half of all older adult residents have been diagnosed with problems affecting the heart and/or blood vessels.

24 Jun 2020

Statin therapy linked to lower death rate in hospitalized patients with COVID-19

The use of cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins is associated with a lower death rate and a lower incidence of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalized with Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), researchers report June 24 in Cell Metabolism.

24 Jun 2020

New nanoparticle drug combination can help treat atherosclerosis

Physicochemical cargo-switching nanoparticles (CSNP) designed by KAIST can help significantly reduce cholesterol and macrophage foam cells in arteries, which are the two main triggers for atherosclerotic plaque and inflammation.

17 Jun 2020

Common cholesterol-lowering drug linked to improvement in gut microbiota

There is a clear link between improved gut microbiota and one of our most common cholesterol-lowering drug groups: statins.

15 Jun 2020

New Canadian study investigates how cancer adapts its metabolism to overcome therapies

Knowing what cancer will do next could lessen the likelihood of it becoming resistant to treatment. A new Canadian study investigates how cancer adapts its metabolism to potentially overcome therapies still in development.

8 Jun 2020

Early diagnosis of pulmonary embolism could enhance treatment in COVID-19 patients

Researchers at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit say early diagnosis of a life-threatening blood clot in the lungs led to swifter treatment intervention in COVID-19 patients.

2 Jun 2020

Polygenic risk scores may improve clinical assessment of patients with elevated heart attack risk

Genetic variants have been linked with a higher risk of having a heart attack, permitting the calculation of "polygenic risk scores" (PRS) that quantify patients' inherited susceptibility based on the number of variants they have.

2 Jun 2020

Cholesterol lowering drugs can improve composition of gut bacteria in obese individuals

The human gut microbiota consists of trillions of bacteria, fungi and virus constituting an inner chemical factory producing a multitude of microbial compounds affecting immunity, neurobiology and metabolism of the human host.

7 May 2020

AHA calls for specialized care for pregnant women with cardiovascular conditions

Women with cardiovascular conditions should be cared for during pregnancy by a cardio-obstetrics team or health care providers experienced in high-risk pregnancies to provide specialized maternity care for the mother and fetus, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement, Cardiovascular Considerations in Caring for Pregnant Patients, published today in the Association's flagship journal Circulation.

4 May 2020

Evinacumab drug reduces cholesterol levels in patients with rare cholesterol disorder

The investigational drug evinacumab reduced low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol to near-normal levels among patients with a rare cholesterol disorder, meeting the primary endpoint in the first randomized placebo-controlled trial of the drug, which is being presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session Together with World Congress of Cardiology (ACC.20/WCC).

31 Mar 2020

Higher serum EPA levels from prescription fish oil associated with lower cardiovascular events

Higher levels of the omega-3 fatty acid eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) found in the blood—and not a decrease in triglyceride levels as originally thought—appear to explain the striking reductions in cardiovascular events and deaths seen among people taking 4 grams daily of the prescription fish oil, icosapent ethyl, according to findings from a REDUCE-IT substudy presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session Together with World Congress of Cardiology

30 Mar 2020

Highly purified fish oil therapy could prevent thousands of cardiovascular events

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have conducted a statistical analysis that predicts more than 70,000 heart attacks, strokes and other adverse cardiovascular events could be prevented each year in the U.S. through the use of a highly purified fish oil therapy.

25 Mar 2020

Statins may protect against heart damage caused by breast cancer therapies

Statins are widely used to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease and related deaths, but can they also help guard against heart damage caused by certain breast cancer therapies?

19 Mar 2020