Elderly with heart failure may do well on statins

Treatment with cholesterol-lowering "statin" drugs, such as Lipitor and Zocor, seems to improve survival in elderly patients with heart failure, new research suggests.

However, data from forward-looking studies are needed before such therapy can be recommended for everyone with heart failure.

"Statins have been shown to be beneficial in patients with (heart disease), but their value in patients with heart failure has been unknown," lead author Dr. Joel G. Ray, from St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, told AMN Health.

"In our study, we decided to see if statin therapy protects elderly heart failure patients from death, heart attack, or stroke."

The study involved 28,828 elderly patients with newly diagnosed heart failure. Of these subjects, 1146 were given statin therapy and 27,682 were not.

During the 7-year study, statin users were 28 percent less likely to die or experience a heart attack or stroke than those who were not taking a statin.

Further analysis revealed that this benefit was largely due a reduced risk of death, rather than heart attack or stroke, according to the report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

While it would be tempting to conclude that all patients with heart failure should be on statin therapy, Ray said that the data to support this strategy are not yet available. He cited cost rather than safety issues as the main reason why doctors should not simply prescribe statins to all heart failure patients.

Still, Ray noted that about 70 percent of heart failure patients have other conditions for which statin therapy is already justified. So, the question of who should get these drugs "really centers on the smaller percentage of patients" who only have heart failure, he added.

An answer to this question may come in a few years after a forward-looking study called CORONA is completed, Ray said.

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SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, January 10, 2005.