Statin News Not So New

A lot of noise is being made in the medical (and lay) media about the statin that can reverse coronary artery disease – the ASTEROID trial. An admirable result, obtained in a large clinical study, but the discovery is not really unexpected.

Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic reported that giving rosuvastatin (Crestor) at doses high enough to aggressively reduce the ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL) level resulted in addition in raising HDL-cholesterol (the ‘good’ one), and reduced the amount of coronary atherosclerosis in two-thirds of the patients. This latter finding is a reversal of the disease process that otherwise leads to heart attack and death.

In fact, reversal of atherosclerosis has been shown to be a realistic goal for the last 5 years.  In a series of 4 articles  Professor Ed Lakatta described the necessary steps, with the science on which they are founded. The results obtained in the present study with Crestor are likely to be duplicated, using other statins, in the next year or so. However, the important steps are not the medication, but the essential concurrent changes in lifestyle, as Professor Lakatta points out.