Statins and heart attack
This article was originally published in The Tan Sheet
Executive Summary
Administering a statin to a heart attack patient within 24 hours of hospitalization "was associated with a substantially decreased risk of in-hospital mortality compared with no statin use (4.0% vs. 15.4%)," Gregg Fonarow, MD, UCLA, et al., report in the September American Journal of Cardiology. Data was collected from 174,635 heart attack patients in 1,230 U.S. hospitals from July 2000 to January 2002. Patients already on statin therapy who were given the drugs upon arrival at the hospital for heart attack treatment also had reduced risk of the event being fatal, the authors found. Those who previously took statins but were not treated with them upon arrival had a slight increase in mortality risk. Statins raise levels of nitric oxide, which possibly reduces inflammation due to heart attacks, Fonarow et al. postulate...