Healthy Me - At Home and Away: Statin

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Friday, February 24, 2012

Cholesterol meds raise diabetes risk in women: study

And each and every medicine has a side effect, the doctor says...
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Posted: 10 January 2012

WASHINGTON - Post-menopausal women who take medication to lower their cholesterol face a higher risk of getting diabetes than women who do not take the popular drugs, known as statins, said a US study on Monday.

The risk was apparent even after researchers adjusted for variables such as age, race/ethnicity and body mass index, said the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, a publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The link appeared regardless of what type of statin, or what dosage, the women were taking, said the study which included 153,000 women with an average age of 63.

The researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota called for more study on the matter but said in the meantime there was no need to revise the guidelines for statin use in non-diabetic people, pointing out that statins aim to fix the negative heart consequences of diabetes.

"Women who are taking statins should be aware of the need to check their blood sugars, along with their liver function tests," said Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women and heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.

"Due to the extensive use of statins in the aging female population, it is critical that more studies are done to help understand the association with statins and the development of diabetes," added Steinbaum, who was not part of the study.

Statins have been dubbed "the aspirin of the 21st century" for their perceived benefits in cardiovascular health and relatively few side effects. Worldwide sales total more than $20 billion annually.

Popularly known names such as Lipitor, Pravachol, and Crestor are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States. About 42 million Americans suffer from high cholesterol.

The drugs help reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke by lowering a person's low-density lipoprotein (LDL), sometimes known as "bad cholesterol".

A review published by JAMA in June 2011 showed that high doses of statins were linked to higher numbers of new diabetes cases in patients, leaving doctors to balance the benefits and risks according to each individual patient.

- AFP/al

Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Cholesterol meds raise diabetes risk in women: study

Thursday, September 8, 2011

A new risk marker for heart diseases

By Sharon See | Posted: 30 July 2011

SINGAPORE: Obesity, high cholesterol and smoking are some well-known factors that can lead to heart disease.

But there is another measure that can push a group of seemingly-healthy people into the high risk category.

Doctors said C-Reactive Protein (CRP) levels can be a more accurate indicator of possible heart diseases.

A screening test that measures CRP in blood can be a more accurate indicator, say doctors.

While such screening tests are not for everyone, those above the age of 40 who go for regular screening may benefit most.

Associate Professor Tai E Shyong, Senior Consultant & Head, Endocrinology, National University Hospital, said: "The Singapore recommendation is that everybody above the age of 40 should have a cholesterol measure, should have a blood pressure measure, should have a blood sugar measure.

"Then you can combine all these information to a score that tells you the chances of having a heart attack the next ten years is five per cent, 15 per cent, 20 per cent. That's the first thing you have to do. You got to do a risk assessment. What we're saying is that those people who're high risk, they need treatment.

"Those people at low risk probably don't need a drug, so there's no decision to be made. It's specifically the people who are in between 10 and 20 per cent. If you measure CRP, and the CRP is high, you might be a little bit more aggressive with drug therapy."

Cholesterol drugs or statins may now be prescribed for those at moderate risk but a high CRP.

Currently, doctors prescribe such drugs known as statins to those with heart disease or who are at high risk.

Studies by European researchers suggests their risk of stroke and heart attack can be cut by about 50 per cent.

However, there are side effects to statins, such as headache, muscle pain, abdominal pain, weakness and nausea.

For this reason, Associate Professor Tai said it is not cost effective for low risk individuals to take statins to lower the risk of heart disease as the side effects may outweigh the benefits.

But he added the best prevention is still to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

"One of the things that is important to remember is that lifestyle modification can bring down CRP. In fact, one of the most effective ways to do it is to lose weight. The other thing that's important is that, if you smoke, you got to stop smoking."

- CNA/fa

Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
A new risk marker for heart diseases

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Drug combo helps slow lung cancer: study

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 31-May-2009 03:43 hrs

Doctors inspect a lung X-ray. The combination of two anti-cancer treatments following standard chemotherapy can slow advanced non-small cell lung cancer, according to a study unveiled Saturday.

The combination of two anti-cancer treatments following standard chemotherapy can slow advanced non-small cell lung cancer, according to a study unveiled Saturday.

Patients treated with a combination of Tarceva, sold by the Swiss drugmaker Roche, and Avastin, a drug by Roche's Genentech unit, saw their cancer growth slow more than a control group treated with Avastin.

More than 750 patients were randomized to receive Avastin and a placebo, or Avastin and Tarceva. Those in the Tarceva group survived an average of 4.8 months before the cancer started growing again, compared to 3.7 months for the control group, said Vincent Miller, the study's main author.

The numbers translated to a 29 percent reduced risk of disease progression for patients who took a combination of Tarceva and Avastin.

All of the patients in the double-blind, Phase 3 trial received four cycles of chemotherapy and Avastin as initial treatment.

Miller, of the Memorial Sloan-Ketterin Cancer Center in New York, presented his findings at the 45th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Orlando, Florida this weekend, the biggest global cancer conference.

Non-small cell lung cancer, often linked to smoking, is the most common lung cancer and the most prevalent cancer, accounting for 14 percent of all cases in the United States.

It is also the deadliest, accounting for 23.3 percent of US cancer deaths, well ahead of colorectal (8.9 percent) and breast (7.2 percent) cancer.

"This is the first study to show that adding erlotinib (Tarceva) to maintenance therapy with bevacizumab (Avastin) delays disease progression in patients who have already received bevacizumab as part of their initial chemotherapy," said Miller.

"We've shown here we can delay progression with the addition of a targeted agent, erlotinib (Tarceva). Critical future work will try to determine which patients will get the greatest benefit from this combination, based in large part on the identification of genetic biomarkers." — AFP

From TODAYOnline.com; see the source article here.

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Would you have taken RESERVE if you knew about it?

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

‘Super pill’ may cut heart disease: Study

English: taking blood pressure in PE (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Afternoon latest

ORLANDO (Florida) — Healthy people could cut their risk of heart disease in half with a new “super pill” that combines low doses of aspirin and drugs that lower blood pressure and cholesterol, a study said yesterday.

“We believe that the polypill probably has the potential to reduce heart disease by 60 per cent and stroke by 50 per cent,” lead investigator Salim Yusuf told reporters at the American College of Cardiology’s annual meeting, where the study was presented.

“The thought that people might be able to take a single pill to reduce multiple cardiovascular risk factors has generated a lot of excitement. It could revolutionise heart disease prevention as we know it,” Mr Yusuf said.

In the three-month study cardiologists compared the impact on blood pressure, cholesterol and heart rate of the combination “polypill” and the medications that make it up, taken individually or together. The study involved 2,053 patients, recruited from heart centres around India between March 2007 and August last year.

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Juice for the heart, anyone?
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The “polypill” contains low doses of three medications against high blood pressure, simvastatin, which lowers LDL (or bad cholesterol) and aspirin, a known bloodthinner.

Participants in the study were divided into groups and given either the “polypill” or aspirin, the cholesterol-lowering medication, or one of the three blood pressure medications on their own; different combinations of blood pressure medications, or all three blood pressure treatments with or without aspirin.

The researchers found that blood pressure in participants in the “polypill” group was lowered as much as in the group taking the three blood pressure medications together, with or without aspirin.

Those blood pressure reductions “could theoretically lead to about a 24 per cent risk reduction in congestive heart disease and 33 per cent risk reduction in strokes in those with average blood pressure levels,” the study said.

The “polypill” reduced LDL cholesterol significantly more than in all other groups except the one in which simvastatin was taken alone. The simvastatin group’s LDL levels fell only slightly more than the “polypill” group, the study found.

Heart rates in the “polypill” group and the group taking one of the blood-pressure medications, atenolol, fell by seven beats a minute — significantly more than in the other study groups.

Side-effects in patients taking the “polypill” were the same as when taking one or two medications, the study found.

“The side-effects of one drug may be counteracted by beneficial effects of another. So the rate of stopping medications was the same,” it said.

The study was “a critical first step to inform the design of larger, more definitive studies, as well as further development of appropriate combinations of blood-pressure lowering drugs with statins and aspirin,” said Mr Yusuf. AFP

From TODAY, World
Tuesday, 31-March-2009