Study suggests modern drugs reduce risk of heart attacks

The risk of heart attack can be reduced by more than 50% by combining a cholesterol-reducing drug, atorvastatin calcium, with a blood pressure-lowering drug amlodipine besylate, a calcium channel blocker.

Additionally the simultaneous initiation of atorvastatin and amlodipine treatment was about three times more effective at preventing heart attacks than adding atorvastatin, a statin, to one of the world’s most widely used blood pressure-lowering drugs, atenolol, a beta-blocker.

According to a principal investigator, Professor Peter Sever of the International Centre for Circulatory Health, Imperial College, London, UK, these results have major implications for physicians and their patients worldwide.

The combination of amlodipine and atorvastatin demonstrates that the risk of heart attacks can be more than halved in the many patients at moderate risk who doctors see every day. In addition, there is a reduction in strokes of 25%.

“However, if we continue to use older blood pressure-lowering drugs, such as atenolol, and choose only to treat high blood pressure in isolation without giving a statin, we only confer a small part of this potential benefit. As a result, the risk of heart attacks and strokes remains unacceptably high in too many patients despite treatment to blood pressure targets,” professor Sever said.

“It is vital that we use the right combination from the start to maximize the reduction in cardiac risk.”