Pfizer has revealed latest findings based on a new post hoc sub-analysis of patients treated with Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium) in the five-year Treating to New Targets (TNT) study.
To determine whether levels of biomarkers or lipids after an eight-week run-in period on Lipitor 10mg were predictive of an increased risk for future cardiovascular events, a nested case-control analysis of the TNT trial was performed. Patients included in the TNT trial had coronary heart disease and were treated with Lipitor.
As per the results, patients with established heart disease who were treated with a statin, 18 novel biomarkers including C-reactive protein (CRP), did not predict future cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke.
These results follow on the heels of findings published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggesting that novel biomarkers such as CRP provided minimal additional value beyond conventional risk factors for assessing cardiovascular risk.
John LaRosa, president and professor of medicine at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, and chair of the TNT steering committee, said: For patients with stable coronary disease who were already on statin therapy, novel biomarkers do not appear to add predictive value over traditional lipid markers such as LDL cholesterol.
Today’s analysis adds to the body of evidence that ‘traditional’ risk factors, including elevated blood cholesterol and blood pressure, as well as cigarette smoking, remain the highest priority targets for reducing cardiovascular risk. Drugs such as atorvastatin, used in this study, have demonstrated effectiveness in accomplishing this goal.