Lake Champlain Cardiology Associates
52 Tom Miller Rd., Plattsburgh, NY 12901  (518) 563-2404
www.lccahearts.com

Using Cholesterol Medication Without High Cholesterol

Over the past 15 years we have learned that cholesterol lowering medications called statins can be extremely beneficial for preventing heart problems, including heart attacks and death. Most people treated with statins had either had a previous heart problem or high cholesterol, or both. Nonetheless, there are a lot of people who will get heart problems even though they do not have high levels of cholesterol. In fact, many of our patients will ask us why they had a heart attack, since they don’t have high cholesterol levels. A recent study, called JUPITER, may help to answer that question.

The JUPITER study gave the powerful cholesterol statin medication called rosuvastatin (Crestor)to 9,000 people, and another 9,000 people just got a sugar pill. Unlike previous studies using different statin drugs, this was the first study in which the patients had not had either previous heart disease or high levels of cholesterol. What they did have was a high level of a blood protein called CRP, which measures the degree of inflammation in the body. Surprisingly to many experts, those people who took rosuvastatin had a 40% lower risk of developing heart problems, and a 20% lower risk of dying in the next 2 years. 25 people had to take the medicine for a 2 years to prevent one heart problem.

Thus, for the first time we have evidence that a medication can prevent heart problems in people who were not thought to be at high risk.. Your doctor may measure your CRP level along with your cholesterol, and discuss with you the potential benefits and risks of taking statins if your CRP is high. Experts are debating what to do with the results, and we can expect more studies to follow.