Pfizer’s Lipitor found to reduce recurrent stroke risk

The results of the five-year study, which was led by an international team that includes a researcher at Duke University Medical Center, have been published in New England Journal of Medicine.

The study results showed that atorvastatin, which is sold as Lipitor, in addition to reducing recurrent stroke risk, can also reduce stroke patients’ risk of heart attack and other major coronary events by 35%; their risk of cardiovascular events such as unstable angina by 42%; and their need for coronary revascularization procedures, such as coronary artery bypass grafting or cardiac catheterization, by 45 %, compared to treatment with an inactive placebo.

In the trial, the researchers enrolled 4,731 patients at 205 study sites in Africa, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. All of the patients had experienced either a stroke or a transient ischemic attack within six months of their enrollment. The patients averaged 63 years of age; 60% were male and 40% female. Patients were monitored for an average of five years following enrollment.

At the time of their enrollment, roughly 66% of the patients had experienced an ischemic stroke, 2% had experienced a hemorrhagic stroke, and 30% had experienced a transient ischemic attack.

The researchers randomly assigned patients to receive either 80mg per day of atorvastatin or an inactive placebo. The study found that atorvastatin, compared with the placebo, reduced the risk of fatal and nonfatal strokes by 16%.

This overall reduction in the risk of stroke was present despite a small increase in the number of patients having a hemorrhagic stroke. Due to the small number of people recruited into trial with a previous hemorrhagic stroke, the researchers said that it is not possible to reach any meaningful conclusions regarding their risks and benefits with atorvastatin treatment.

The researchers suggest that the drug appears to exercise its overall protective effect by lowering the levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol – popularly known as ‘bad’ cholesterol – in patients’ blood.

“This is the first study to demonstrate that treatment with a statin, a type of cholesterol-lowering drug, can reduce the risk of strokes in patients who have had a recent stroke or a transient ischemic attack and who have no known history of coronary heart disease,” said Dr Larry Goldstein, director of the Duke Stroke Center and a member of the trial’s steering committee.

“These results will have a major effect on how people are treated following a stroke,” Dr Goldstein continued. “The findings are very important for physicians and patients because they show that the addition of this drug to other treatments further reduces the risk of another stroke, which is a pretty big step in improving what we can do for stroke patients.”