A New Role for Statin Drugs? Cholesterol fighters may reduce deaths soon after heart attacks
By Nathan Seppa
People brought to a hospital in the throes of a heart attack are more likely to survive if they receive a statin drug, a new study finds. The report could pave the way for a trial to ascertain whether doctors should routinely use the cholesterol-lowering agents to stabilize these heart patients.
Guidelines for physicians recommend prescribing statins to hospitalized heart attack sufferers only as they are being discharged. But some doctors now give statins to such patients much sooner, a practice based on animal tests suggesting that the drugs’ effects go beyond fighting cholesterol.