Raising the dose of cholesterol lowering statin drugs could prevent many more heart attacks and strokes, say researchers.
UK and Australian teams compared a standard statin treatment with a more intensive therapy, publishing results in the Lancet medical journal.

They concluded that higher doses cut heart attacks and deaths by 13%.

Experts warned that a bigger dose of the most popular statin could produce many more cases of side effects.

Statins cut levels of so-called “bad” LDL cholesterol, and the risk of heart attacks and strokes in higher risk patients.

Almost two million people in the UK are prescribed them, and one type is even available over the counter at pharmacies to patients assessed as at “moderate” cardiovascular risk.

The two studies in the Lancet were carried out at the universities of Oxford and Sydney, and pooled the results of dozens of other trials to give a more reliable verdict on the likely benefits and risks of doing this.

In the first study, when a standard statin regime was compared to an “intensive” regime, further drops in LDL cholesterol levels were produced.

In turn, there was a 15% further reduction in “major vascular events” – which included a 13% drop in heart deaths and non-fatal heart attacks, 19% fewer operations to treat heart disease, and a fall of 16% in the number of strokes.

The other study also revealed falls in LDL cholesterol and “vascular events”.

Commenting on the study, two academics, Professor Bernard Cheung and Professor Karen Lam, from the University of Hong Kong, said that people with a “substantial” heart or stroke risk should have intensive statin treatment.

Even those with apparently low LDL cholesterol could benefit, they said.

They added: “At the population level, statins are underused, so the urgent priority is to identify people who would benefit most from statin therapy and to lower their LDL cholesterol aggressively, with the more potent statins if necessary.”

However, the study authors warned that simply raising the dose of the most commonly-used statin in the UK, simvastatin, the version available direct from pharmacies, might be counterproductive.

A rare side-effect of low-dose simvastatin is muscle weakness, known as myopathy. In some cases this can lead to more serious muscle damage.

At a low dose, three in 10,000 (0.03%) patients developed myopathy, but when a higher dose of simvastatin was prescribed, this jumped to nine in a 1,000 (0.9%).

Dr Louise Bowman, one of the researchers, said: “It may be safer to lower cholesterol using low doses of the more potent statins rather than increasing the dose of simvastatin.”

This advice was echoed by the British Heart Foundation, which part-funded the study.

Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said that simply “ramping up the dose” of simvastatin might not be the best option.

He said: “We know that cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease – cutting it cuts your risk of a heart attack. However it’s been unclear whether going the extra mile to lower cholesterol even further, pays off.”
From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11712569

Cholesterol lowering drugs used to prevent heart problems can reduce the risk of bowel cancer by 12%, a study has suggested.
The beneficial effect of statins emerged from an analysis of 22 studies involving more than 2.5 million participants.

“Statin use was associated with a statistically significant reduction in colorectal cancer,” said lead research Dr Jewel Samadder, from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the US.

The most common type of statins, known as lipophilic, had the greatest impact.

Statins block the production of cholesterol in the liver and help prevent the build up of hard deposits on the walls of arteries.

They are normally taken by people with diabetes, at risk of heart attacks or with abnormally high cholesterol levels.

But long-term statin use has been associated with a reduced risk of several cancers, including breast, prostate, lung, pancreas and liver – and now bowel.

“Our findings suggest that randomised controlled trials designed to test the hypothesis that statins reduce the risk of colorectal cancer are warranted,” said Dr Samadder.

The findings were presented today at the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology in San Antonio, Texas.

Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in the UK, affecting around 38,600 people a year.

About 16,260 people in the UK die from the disease each year, though death rates are falling.

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/statins-cut-bowel-cancer-risk-by-12-per-cent

On the morning after Gordon Brown’s “disastrous” day- Health Direct sends a message to him: laughter can do as much good for your body as a jog around the park, scientists have claimed.

Doctors describe “mirthful laughter” as the equivalent of “internal jogging” because it can lower blood pressure, stress and boost the immune system much like moderate exercise.

A number of volunteers asked to watch just 20 minutes of comedies and stand up routines saw a dramatic drop in stress hormones, blood pressure and cholesterol.

That means that the “laughercise” could be a way to reduce heart disease and diabetes. It is especially important to the elderly who may find it hard to perform more physical activities.

Dr Lee Berk, from Loma Linda University, California, who led the study, said that emotions and behaviour had a physical impact on the body.

He concluded “that the body’s response to repetitive laughter is similar to the effect of repetitive exercise”.

“As the old biblical wisdom states, it may indeed be true that laughter is a good medicine,” he said.

Dr Berk, who has been studying the effects of laughter for more than two decades, said that the high you get from a giggling fit was similar to the endorphin rush from exercise.

He has shown how it can reduce your risk of a heart attack and diabetes and generally regulate the body’s vital functions.

It is also an important way to de-stress after a day’s work, he believes.

In the mid-1990s, Dr Berk found that laughter increases the number of natural killer cells in cancer patients. Natural killer cells are the body’s way of fighting tumours.

For the latest study he had 14 volunteers watch either a stressful 20 minute clip of the war film Saving Private Ryan or an extract from a comedy or stand up routine.

Blood samples taken afterwards showed the reduction in stress hormones and increase in immune T cells for those who watched the comedy. Blood pressure testing showed it was down too with this group.

In 1997, Dr Berk performed experiments with diabetic heart patients. One group watched a television comedy each day for one year, another did not.

The difference in outcomes was stunning. At the end of the year, the comedy viewing group required less blood-pressure medication.

Eight per cent of the comedy viewers had another heart attack, compared with 42 per cent of those who did not regularly view it.

An earlier study also showed that watching just half an hour of comedy a day slashes levels of stress hormones and compounds linked to heart disease.

Levels of compounds linked to hardening of the arteries and other cardiac problems had also dropped, while levels of ‘good’ cholesterol – thought to protect against heart disease – rose.

An earlier study by Dr Berk also showed that the mere anticipation of a good laugh can benefit health.

The expectation of watching a comedy video was enough to raise levels of feel-good endorphins and boost amounts of a hormone that helps our immune system fight infection.

The findings were presented at the Experimental Biology conference.

From:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Laughter-really-is-the-best-medicine-as-doctors-find-it-can-be-as-healthy-as-exercise