Prevention of recurrent life-threatening arrhythmias: will lipid-lowering therapy make a difference?

There is a strong, positive, independent, continuous, graded relation between hypercholesterolemia and the risk for coronary heart disease (CAD). In clinical trials, it has been shown that 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitors or statins inhibit HMGCoA reductase competitively, reduce LDL levels more than other cholesterol-lowering drugs and lower triglyceride levels in hypertriglyceridemic patients (1,2). Prospective, controlled trials have demonstrated beyond doubt that statins reduce the relative risk of major coronary events by ;30%. This has been shown in trials involving patients with and without CAD and with and without hypercholesterolemia (3–7). Accordingly, lipid lowering by means of statin therapy is now widely applied in clinical practice.