Prevention and treatment of dyslipidemia should be considered as an integral part of individual cardiovascular prevention interventions, which should be addressed primarily to those at higher risk who benefit most. To date, statins remain the first-choice therapy, as they have been shown to reduce the risk of major vascular events by lowering low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C). However...

OBJECTIVE The aim was to examine statin discontinuation rates in a cohort of elderly Australians with newly diagnosed cancer using population-based secondary health data. DESIGN Observational cohort study. SETTING New South Wales, the largest jurisdiction in Australia. The Pharmaceutical Benefits and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Schemes are national programmes subsidising prescripti...

PURPOSE To retrospectively determine if preprocedural statin treatment is associated with a reduction of cardiovascular events after carotid angioplasty and stent placement (CAS) in patients with symptomatic carotid stenosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS A study resulting in a prospective database was approved by the institutional ethics review board; written informed consent was obtained. The appro...

Statins have been shown to be very effective and safe in numerous randomized clinical trials, and became the implacable first-line treatment against atherogenic dyslipidemia. However, even with optimal statin treatment, 60% to 80% of residual cardiovascular risk still exists. The patients with familial hypercholesterolemia which results in extremely high level of low density lipoprotein cholest...

BACKGROUND Many clinical guidelines have adopted a multifactorial cardiovascular risk assessment to identify high-risk individuals for treatment. The Framingham risk chart is a widely used risk engine to calculate the absolute cardiovascular risk of an individual. Cost-effective analyses are typically used to evaluate therapeutic strategies, but it is more problematic for a clinician when faced...

BACKGROUND In animal studies, statins have induced cataract formation. Because incident cataract is relatively uncommon, studies in humans have been unable to exclude a clinically important effect. AIMS To assess the risk of cataract associated with the use of statins, and whether it is increased by concurrent use of drugs that inhibit the cytochrome P450 system. DESIGN Population-based cas...

BACKGROUND Statins have been linked with improved prostate cancer survival and lower risk of recurrence in men treated with radiation therapy. However, the association is unclear for surgically-treated men. We studied the risk of prostate cancer recurrence and death by statin usage after radical prostatectomy in a cohort of prostate cancer patients treated with radical prostatectomy. METHODS ...

W hen Gertrude Stein famously wrote, “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” she seemed to reveal an ignorance of, if not contempt for, the flowers. After all, any gardener knows some roses look like flabby cabbages and others sport flesh-ripping thorns. Do physicians, MCOs, and PBMs who act as though “statin is a statin is a statin is a statin”display a similarly uncritical attitude toward the d...

Statin therapy may induce skeletal muscle damage ranging from myalgia to severe rhabdomyolysis. Our previous preclinical studies showed that statin treatment in rats involves the reduction of skeletal muscle ClC-1 chloride channel expression and related chloride conductance (gCl). An increase of the activity of protein kinase C theta (PKC theta) isoform, able to inactivate ClC-1, may contribute...

Although statins represent the mainstay therapy for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia and have a positive tolerability and safety profile, the occurrence of statinassociated myopathy, an accepted class effect of these drugs, may bemore common than originally thought. In this regard, a recent paper by Phillips and collegues on the myotoxic effect of statin has been followed by a number of in...