Diabetes News:

Study: Type Two Diabetics May Benefit from Statins

Type 2 diabetics could benefit from cholesterol-lowering stain drugs to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease even if they do not have high cholesterol, according to a study reported in the August 21 issue of the Lancet.

Many recent studies have shown the benefits of statin therapy to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in various groups of patients.

Although diabetes increases cardiovascular risk, whether all diabetics should receive cholesterol-lowering therapy remains unclear, especially for those patients who do not have high cholesterol.

Lead researcher Dr. Helen Colhoun, of University College Dublin in Ireland, and her colleagues examined the effectiveness of atorvastatin for the primary prevention of major cardiovascular events.

The 2,800 study participants between the ages of 40 to 75 years received either a placebo or atorvastatin. The participants had no previous history of cardiovascular disease and had a low concentration of LDL or "bad cholesterol."

About four years later, the researchers found that acute coronary heart disease events, coronary revascularisations and strokes were reduced by around a third among patients given atorvastatin compared with those given placebo.

Atorvastatin reduced the death rate of the participants by 27% compared with placebo. Strokes were reduced by 48%.

Colhoun said no justification is available for having a particular threshold level of LDL-cholesterol as the sole arbiter of which patients with type 2 diabetes should receive statins.

“The debate about whether all people with this disorder warrant statin treatment should now focus on whether any patients are at sufficiently low risk for this treatment to be withheld,” she concluded.

Dr. Abhimanyu Garg, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said the findings increase confidence in lipid-lowering drug therapy for prevention of coronary heart disease in patients with type 2 diabetes.

However, Garg emphasized in an accompanying editorial in the Lancet that it is still prudent to assess an individual’s risk-benefit ratio before recommending long-term statin therapy.

Garg said maximal lowering of lipids with diet, exercise, weight loss and rigorous glycemic control must still be attempted before considering lipid-lowering drugs in type 2 diabetics at moderate to low risk of coronary heart disease.

Source: Diabetes Week staff, August 21, 2004