Word: statin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Among the best-selling prescription drugs in the U.S. today are the statins--powerful medications that can lower cholesterol levels by as much as 30 points. A fix that quick comes at a price, however, as Baycol users learned this fall. The popular statin was pulled off the market after health officials discovered that a disturbing number of users were suffering from muscle disorders. Other statins, including atorvastatin, lovastatin and pravastatin, remain safe, according...
...study suggests that loading up on E--and other so-called antioxidants, including vitamin C--does little or nothing to prevent future heart attacks or strokes in patients with coronary disease. In fact, there's evidence that the vitamins may actually blunt the effects of widely used cholesterol-lowering statin drugs and niacin. Can you still hope that vitamin E will prevent heart disease in the first place? Until research proves otherwise...
...STATINS WORK Already 25 million people worldwide take so-called statin drugs to lower their cholesterol. The largest statin study ever conducted shows that one of them--a drug called Zocor--lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke one-third in high-risk patients (for example, people with diabetes). The big surprise: the drugs worked even when cholesterol levels were normal. The same study looked at whether the antioxidant vitamins C, E and beta-carotene have a similarly beneficial effect. The answer...
ADDED VALUE Are you on statin drugs to lower your cholesterol? Here are benefits you probably never counted on. A Scottish study shows that Pravachol, one brand of statin, reduces the risk of developing diabetes 30%. And a study of heart-attack survivors finds that Pravachol reduces the odds of stroke 20%. No, it's not time to add statins to the drinking water. They need to be taken every day for life, and they carry risks--including liver damage...
...Statins were much in the news last week. They are so successful in preventing heart attacks that researchers are furiously investigating all the other things these drugs might be doing for the heart besides lowering cholesterol levels. It turns out that the noncholesterol effects of statins, such as controlling clotting and inflammation, may be as important as the cholesterol effects. In a study of patients given atorvastatin (Lipitor) as soon as they arrived at a hospital complaining of chest pain, it was found that those who took the drug for four weeks after their cardiac event were significantly less likely...