A new study that can change the treatment for cardiovascular disease showed that statin drugs can really lower the risk of heart attacks and even strokes in patients who apparently feel well. The researchers tracked 18,000 people who had normal cholesterol and found out that the drugs also helped for lowering the risk of heart diseases deaths by 20%.

The statin drugs are the most widely recommended drugs throughout the country and the researchers advise people to make a daily treatment with these medicines. The four-year study showed only benefic effects that it stopped at only two years, as the researchers stated at the meeting of the American Heart Assn in New Orleans on Monday.

Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, was involved in the study and told the Los Angeles Times that the results were “very, very dramatic.” She added that the institute has already scheduled a plan of revising guidelines for treatment and prevention of heart disease. As she also said, the new results will be added to the new recommendations.
 
Further studies will be made as to see whether the arterial inflammation could be cured with statins. Many healthy people will have to undergo a blood test for above-normal levels of a compound called C-reactive protein. Crestor was the drug which founded the study. The specific drug is called rosuvastatin and is released by AstraZeneca under the name of Crestor.

Still, Dr. Tim Gardner of the Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Del. and president of the American Heart Assn. stated that the results are “likely to be a class effect, not a specific drug effect. This is a win for all statins, I would say." Yet, the new treatment could prevent nearly 50,000 heart attacks, strokes and deaths each year.